Humanities Kansas recently awarded $11,774 to the Salina Art Center in Salina to support “High Strangeness: Encounters with the Unexplained in Kansas and Beyond,” an exhibition and series of events that will connect audiences with first-hand accounts of UFOs, unexplained phenomena, and “high strangeness” incidents in Kansas and the diverse perspectives people have about them. 

According to the Art Center, Misty Serene serves as the project director; the project is guest curated by Ksenya Gurshtein.

The exhibition “High Strangeness: Encounters with the Unexplained in Kansas and Beyond” will be held at the Salina Art Center from May 28 to August 31, 2025. It features photographs by Kansas photographer Hugo Zelada Romero and an audio-visual installation by the late British-American artist Susan Hiller. Romero’s photographs document UFO sightings and unexplained incidents in Kansas, with the images sometimes altered to enhance emotional impact. Romero also explores the history of metaphysical practices and pop culture representations of UFOs found in Kansas. Susan Hiller’s piece, Witnessing, is a later version of her ground-breaking 2000 Witness, one of the first works of contemporary art to take the subject of UFO sightings seriously.

“The humanities generate ideas,” shared Julie Mulvihill, Humanities Kansas Executive Director. “This unique exhibit will spark plenty of ideas and invite conversations on the mysteries of our place in the universe.”

The larger story this project will explore is the recent explosion of interest in UFOs and the shifting public perspectives on unexplained phenomena. In January 2023, the Pentagon released a report revealing that its office tracking UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) has had more than 500 sightings since 2004, with some deemed unexplained by the military. In July 2023, Congress held committee hearings and heard testimony calling “to remove the stigma” for those who report UAPs. This change has also been supported by two decades of scholarship in the humanities, where scholars and journalists, often backed by scientists, have urged taking reports of unexplained phenomena seriously, if only as manifestations of wide-spread psychological and spiritual needs of our time. Today, people in positions of power and authority are admitting that there is some kind of reality to claims that have been disparaged as hoaxes and delusions for over 75 years. This shift forces us collectively to acknowledge that there are things we don’t definitively know or easily understand and learn how to live with that knowledge.

If you want to share a first-person account of an encounter with the unexplained, you can do so by emailing [email protected]. In the coming months, you will also be able to do so by filling out an anonymous form on the Salina Art Center website. The collected accounts will be turned into a performance by local actors in the summer of 2025.

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Art Center Photo: The exhibition will feature photographs by Kansas photographer Hugo Zelada Romero