Charles Leonard Thiessen (1903-1989) was a Nebraska artist, critic, administrator, and teacher whose studies in painting and design took him to the world’s capitals, especially Stockholm and London. In the 1940s and 50s, he studied the formation of the British Arts Programs that were to inspire America’s National Arts Programs.

During World War II, he served in USAAF Intelligence. Following the war, he dedicated himself to creating art and advancing arts appreciation in Nebraska and neighboring states. He was the first Executive Director of the Nebraska Arts Council in Omaha and in that role achieved a national reputation for excellence, fairness, and creativity as an arts administrator.

His art is, however, his greatest gift to the city, the state, and the nation he served for almost the entirety of the twentieth century. This man of the Plains was truly one of the “Great Generation.”

Bill Wallis’s Prairie Symphony is a biography that explores the natural and social forces that shaped this cultured and vivacious intellectual and painter and also a recounting of arts projects on which Wallis and Thiessen worked and of the friendship that developed across two decades — from 1969 to 1989, the year of Dr. Thiessen's death.

One of their early joint projects that celebrated Plains art was an original opera, Napoleon, in which Wallis performed. That led to a second opera, Hanblecheya, based on Lakota (Sioux) literature, legend, and song — the subject of other works. They did a fine arts book of poetry, and they laid the plans for Prairie Symphony.

Historical interest in such accomplishments has made Prairie Symphony a rich resource for researchers and students of history.

You, too, can celebrate the Plains. Order your copy by clicking here.