Past Events

Join us for a day in Red Cloud, the land that inspired Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather! On this one-day bus trip, you will be able to experience the beautiful “Divide” and tour Cather’s childhood home, as well as other historic buildings related to her life and writing. The cost is $100.00* which includes motor coach fare, lunch, guided tours, and refreshments. It is important to wear comfortable shoes and clothing for walking.

Join us for an alfresco dinner and concert at the Nebraska State Historical Society's Burlington Depot featuring renowned guitarist Daniel Martinez. Tickets for this show must be purchased in advance.

Over the course of three weeks in May and June, playwright A.P. Andrews along with four collaborators will be in residency in Red Cloud to create a theatrical retelling of Willa Cather’s novel, The Song of the Lark. The group of five multi-disciplinary artists will use passages from the text, as well as original material, to recreate Thea Kronborg’s journey of self-discovery.

Please join us in admiring these wonderful pieces and in meeting the people who created them. 

Once again, the Willa Cather Foundation welcomes guests to the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie for our annual Wildflower Walk. This year, education director Tracy Tucker will lead the walk at 8:00 pm so that you may experience the beautiful sunset and evening birdsong on the Cather prairie. No admission will be charged, though donations to the Cather Foundation help support our educational programs.

"Fragments of Desire: Cather and the Arts"
The 60th annual Willa Cather Spring Conference 
Red Cloud, Nebraska

please register each attendee individually.

Fragments of Desire: Cather and the Arts

Hosted by the Willa Cather Foundation and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Cather Project

"It had come all the way; when men lived in caves, it was there. A vanished race; but along the trails, in the stream, under the spreading cactus, there still glittered in the sun the bits of their frail clay vessels, fragments of their desire."

About the exhibition: An excerpt from Cather's 1915 novel The Song of the Lark serves as a textual basis for a series of drawings that explore the subjects of collaboration, identity, and ambition through the physical imposition of translucent drawings on hand-rendered text.

Born in Grand Island, Nebraska in 1887, Grant Reynard began his young artistic career in his father’smusic store singing and playing the piano. 

Reynard went on to become one of the most prolific illustrators of his time with his work appearing in The Saturday Evening Post, Redbook, Ladies’ Home Journal, Harper’s Bazaar, McCall’s, and Scribner’s Magazine, just to name a few. 

To celebrate the publication centenary of Willa Cather’s novel The Song of the Lark, the Willa Cather Foundation has invited artists from across Nebraska or with Nebraska ties to participate in an exhibition entitled The Growth of an Artist: Commemorating 100 Years of The Song of the Lark. Artists participating will create works in various mediums inspired by many themes present in the novel’s text and their work will be on display during the 60th annual Willa Cather Spring Conference, which will center on Cather’s use of the arts in The Song o