Totem A MONA Moment By Ron Roth Director Museum of Nebraska Art

Museum of Nebraska Art in a science building on the campus of Hastings College, a remarkable work of public art links the two floors of the main hall of the building. Here in the din of lectures and hum of computers, two upward thrusting strata reach to the ceiling on either side of the main walkway on the second floor. They are large, vertical shafts, about 30 feet high and three feet high. In this dreamlike Totem, earth colored strata encasements are stripped away in curving linear streamers, revealing tantalizing slices of language, symbols, intimations of the rich worlds of lost cultures. These beautiful decorations of our specie's intellectual history are layered and wash over each other, each with their own rich, unique coloration. Their colors are in counterpoint to the progressive beauty of each culture's symbols. The Chinese characters dance with self contained, individual passion; below ancient, prehistoric runes reverberate with mysterious possibilities, supporting other, fervently evocative imagery from the Egyptian, Mayan, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Phoenician, and Roman.

In this great work of public art by Lincoln artist Larry Roots, the intellectual beauty of culture is not historically progressive. Each culture's symbols and alphabets and scientific notations have their own rich life, each taking their place in rhythmic, coherent layers of design. The symmetry, the history of culture is celebrated here in an especially appropriate setting. Here students can reflect on the historic continuum of the life of ideas, and appreciate the contributions of the ancients, whose cultural and scientific discoveries were as potent and elegant as any of our own.