LUX Center for the Arts is Lincoln's community arts center, providing vital resources for the visual arts in Nebraska.

Arts Education
LUX offers year-round classes for all ages in ceramics, painting, drawing, glass, mixed media, and more. Last year, nearly 400 classes and workshops reached about 3,000 people, with 800 children ages 5-15 participating in summer camps.

Ceramics Program
Our expanded ceramics program includes wheel throwing, hand building, glaze techniques, slip casting, and an array of intermediate and advanced classes. We added Lincoln's only publicly available gas-fired kiln and are planning a new ceramics facility on the LUX campus to meet growing demand.

Diverse Artistic Disciplines
The LUX remains committed to offering diverse artistic disciplines in our classrooms – including printmaking, metalsmithing, and more – by adapting to the evolving interests of our community. New printmaking fellowships and partnerships with artists like Printmaker Karen Kunc at Constellation Studios extend our reach.

Artists-in-Residence
Our Artists-in-Residence program brings four emerging artists to Lincoln annually, offering them studio space, materials, and solo exhibitions in exchange for teaching classes. This program enriches our community with diverse talent and reinforces LUX’s commitment to quality instruction.

Outreach
Our outreach progams expand our community impact. The LUX has retooled our 14-year-old United Way outreach program to four Title 1 after-school programs through small group trauma-informed mentoring. The LUX has collaborated regularly with community organizations, offering bilingual classes with El Centro de las Americas, art programs with Hope Spoke, LPS’ Family Literacy program, Big Brothers and Sisters, Mourning Hope, and also providing classes to St. Elizabeth’s cancer survivors group.

Fellowship Opportunities
At the LUX, we believe fostering talent at every level. Our work-exchange fellowships for ceramic and printmaking students create a nurturing environment for artists to thrive and share knowledge.

Exhibition Programs
The LUX holds a sterling reputation as a place to view and experience challenging, stimulating art. Visitors can view for FREE up to 30 exhibitions annually across five galleries, showcasing professional, community, and student art, including the LUX Print Collection.

Community-Wide Arts Activities
LUX remains active in the community by participating in and organizing festivals, including the Emerge LNK Mural Festival and Winterfest, bringing the joys of art to everyone in our community.

Public Art Projects
In August 2021, we invited national, international and local artists to create seven new murals and one temporary art installation, encouraging people outside to look anew at University Place and see how art can be transformative in their own lives. Since then, our bank of murals has grown to ten and provide a perfect backdrop for the newly formed and state approved Uni Place Creative District, the first creative district in Lincoln. This designation allows the LUX and its partners to bring even more arts activities to University Place – expect more murals, more music, more theatre, and more creative businesses. These efforts intend to revitalize and strengthen 48th Street and the diverse neighborhood surrounding the LUX.

Now in its 47th year, LUX Center for the Arts was organized as the University Place Art Center in 1977 to provide a cultural focal point for the University Place neighborhood. In 1987, the center moved to its current location, the old University Place city hall located at the corner of N. 48th Street and Baldwin. Benefactor, artist, and arts educator Gladys M. Lux purchased and donated the building for arts education purposes. In 2000, the center purchased an adjacent building and created classrooms and studios to improve its ability to offer quality programs. We honored Gladys Lux by renaming the center to reflect her generosity.

In June 2017, The LUX completed work on a parking lot and a Ceramics Center, with two new classrooms — the Lee and Debbie Stuart Foundation Handbuilding Studio and and WRK Family Foundation Wheel Throwing Studio. These new classrooms doubled the amount of classroom space at the LUX. The Ceramics Center also features a plaster room, a kiln room, a glaze room, a space for future outdoor kilns and the Steve Wake Student Gallery. Four new artists-in-residence studios were also created. In November 2018, renovation of our historic 103-year-old main building was completed, including our galleries, classrooms and offices and updating heating, cooling and electrical systems. This completed the LUX's $1.7 million renovation project. In 2017, the city gavve a historic designation to the LUX's main building. 

Together with our public, private and foundation partners, the LUX Center offers a broad range of art appreciation and educational opportunities for people in Lincoln and surrounding areas, with plans to do so for another 45 years.

Nestled within the historic University Place neighborhood, the UNI Place Creative District invites you to embark on a journey through a world of artistic experiences. From captivating theater productions and soul-stirring musical performances to thought-provoking art exhibitions and enriching art classes, the district is a haven for creativity and culture.

Amidst this creative haven, you’ll discover more than ten murals, crafted by artists from around the globe. These murals serve as a vivid backdrop for exploring our parks, cultural institutions, an iconic coffee house, and chic boutiques.

In UNI Place Creative District, you’ll find a neighborhood that effortlessly blends the old and the new. Here, you can wander through historic buildings steeped in character, pamper yourself at a hair salon, enroll in an inspiring art class, immerse yourself in the world of theatrical performances, or lose yourself in the beauty of art exhibitions. It’s a place where you can indulge in a relaxing massage or express your individuality with a unique tattoo, as well as take a captivating mural tour.

As we look ahead, the creative district is brimming with exciting plans. We envision a calendar filled with community-wide festivals, inspired by the success of the EMERGE LNK Mural Festival. Expect vibrant maker’s markets, electrifying musical performances, and captivating theatrical showcases, all designed to bring our community together in celebration.

These cherished cultural institutions, intertwined with emerging businesses and welcoming community spaces, form the very fabric of University Place’s distinctive identity. Together, they lay the foundation upon which we aspire to craft a future vibrant with creativity, enriched by diversity, and bound by a strong sense of community.

Written by the Nebraska Arts Council

Uni Place Creative District Video

Murals

Here at LUX Center for the Arts, we acknowledge the truth that the land we work, learn and live on is the ancestral and forcibly ceded territory of indigenous nations. We acknowledge that the land and the natural resources on which these nations depended were and are inextricably linked to their identities, cultures and livelihoods, as well as their physical and spiritual well-being.

We honor vital ancestral knowledge and expertise of land, resources, culture and spirit.

We honor the elders, past and present, of the indigenous nations that inhabited the lands of eastern Nebraska: Ponca, Pawnee, Omaha and Otoe-Missouria.

We honor the many other indigenous nations that we do not name but who lived on or traveled these lands over thousands of years, as well as those who live on these lands today.

We honor this land upon which we work, learn and live. We pledge to steward it throughout the generations.

LUX Center for the Arts a is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Our EIN number is 47-0629528.

990 Form (2021)