Step back into Omaha's past to explore "starving artists," historic neighborhoods and unexpected connections.
Welcome to From the Archives! I’m Alexis Scargill, Media Archivist here at Nebraska Public Media. Each month, I’ll highlight treasures from our collection spanning more than 70 years of broadcast history in our great state.
A Peek into the Past
It's August, and as kids go back to school, we're going back in time. The year is 1994... but also, the year is 1950 and 1888. I'll explain below. We're taking a look at our 1994 documentary Feast of the Starving Artists, and this one's got something for everyone. In just thirty minutes, you get a peek into:
- how artist-in-residence programs work,
- how this world-famous program wound up in a former bag factory in Omaha,
- daily life in Omaha's Little Italy,
- and Omaha in the '90s.
Now that's economical!
The Visionary
We meet Ree Schonlau (now Ree Kaneko), the energetic artist who founded this ambitious international program we now know as the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. Ree feeds the titular starving artists, while also quenching the audience's thirst for knowledge about Omaha's Old Market and nearby Little Italy. She's anything but stingy!
The Setting
It was interesting to learn about Omaha's Little Italy as someone who grew up in the Little Italy that is the state of New Jersey. Moving here, I quickly learned about the German and Czech influence on the state's culture, so it's nice to explore another facet. Little Italy, where Ree grew up, is next to the Old Market neighborhood where our artists-in-residence program is hosted. The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts moved to a nearby building after a fire in 1999, so it's great to have this documentary to capture that moment in time where it was operating within the former Bemis Omaha Bag Company building on South 11th Street.
The Unexpected History
What's Marilyn Monroe's connection to the Bemis Omaha Bag Company? (Come for the history lesson, stay for the fun facts.) Hear Ree tell it in this clip:
I'm in the middle of a rewatch of Project Runway (on season four currently), so I'm up on how difficult these nontraditional material challenges can be, but I'd say this designer pulled it off (with an assist from Marilyn Monroe).
The Artists
Speaking of designers, we get to meet a broad swath of artists-in-residence, who span both media and geography—from painting to sculpture, and from Mexico City to Belfast. One of the joys of being an audiovisual archivist is getting to reconnect people with their own past in such a vivid way, so I was champing at the bit to share this with the artists.
Alexa Wright—who now works in various media including photography, video, interactive installations, and participatory projects—remembered her time at the Bemis well, but had forgotten about the community workshop element shown in the doc.
I also heard from Susan Francis, whose time in the program was spent not in Omaha but rather at an art farm in Marquette, Nebraska. While Susan's recent work is more focused on interiors, it was cool to take a look back at her more exterior-facing work with natural materials like tumbleweed and beeswax. She also vividly remembers experiencing Nebraska's powerful weather systems (hailstones the size of golf balls, frequent trips to the tornado shelter). One of those storms resulted in a four-legged guest climbing into her bed—a big farm dog who didn't want to ride out the storm alone.
Stream Feast of the Starving Artists (1994) here.
What would you like to see from the archives?
I would love to hear from you! Send your requests, compliments, complaints, knock-knock jokes, etc. to fromthearchives@nebraskapublicmedia.org. I’ll see you next month!
Published August 2026