UNL’s opening First Friday of the new academic year will feature gallery openings and lectures as campus museums offer extended hours on Sept. 5.

Participating venues include the Great Plains Art Museum, International Quilt Study Center and Museum, and Sheldon Museum of Art.

The Great Plains Art Museum will be open 5-7 p.m. and will feature speaker Melissa Dabakis discussing “Ecoventions: Art on the Farm.”

Dabakis is an American and modern European art history professor at Kenyon College. She will speak on contemporary environmental art and site-specific sculpture.

For more information, go to http://www.unl.edu/plains/gallery/gallery.shtml.

The International Quilt Study Center and Museum is open 4:30 to 7 p.m. and will feature the opening of “Signature Cloths,” an exhibition that explores sewn signatures as visual ciphers and as a method of social engagement.

Quilt artist Luke Haynes will also present a lecture on “arc-quilt-tecture” at 5:30 p.m.

For more information, go to http://www.quiltstudy.org.

The Sheldon Museum of Art will be open 5 to 7 p.m. and will hold a Big Red themed reception with music by the Cornhusker Marching Band’s pep band, tailgate food and a Big Red gallery game. Admission is free.

For more information, go http://www.sheldonartmuseum.org.