A&M Building. Big Springs, Nebraska. 2024.
The A&M Building is a small, public-facing exhibition space and reading room situated in a brick storefront in Big Springs, Nebraska. Located in the western panhandle of the state, far from what most would consider a cultural center, it is both an artwork and an initiative intended to deepen understanding of the Ogallala Geological Region (OGR) and Aquifer. The scale of the Ogallala is almost incomprehensible, extending beneath eight states: Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas.
The A&M Building is committed to presenting projects that offer a more comprehensive and nuanced perspective on the ecology, cultures, and histories of the region. By inviting the public to discover and appreciate aspects of the region that might otherwise remain overlooked or forgotten, the space creates opportunities for dialogue, shared experience, and a deeper understanding of cultural and environmental stewardship. It also houses a public, non-lending library and bookstore focused on art, ecology, and rural environments, complementing the primarily fiction-based collection of the Big Springs Library, located across the street and a frequent M12 partner.
While the A&M Building functions as an exhibition space and reading room, it is first and foremost a socially engaged artwork—a platform for outdoor engagement and other cultural projects, including guided field trips exploring the region’s cultural landscape and ecology. Its installations are not gallery exhibitions in the traditional sense. Rather, the A&M Building extends M12’s commitment to creating artworks that foster more nuanced understandings of rural places. Modest in scale, with a modest exhibit installed each season, these presentations create opportunities to encounter art and cultural artifacts through shared learning and exchange.
Programming at the A&M Building brings these installations into conversation with regional historians, writers, scientists, farmers, poets, and others for whom the Ogallala is a vital source of life and culture. In doing so, the project expands ideas of what art can look like, where it can take place, and how the Ogallala region—and the “American rural” more broadly—can be represented.
From 2021–26, M12 hosted visiting artists and scholars at the A&M and Phelps Hotel in Big Springs. Other activities on site have included a street-fair–style event, artist talks with Dana Fritz and Kelly Yarborough at the Big Springs Public Library, and visiting historians Josh Garrett-Davis and Sean
