Brian Hearn

Brian Hearn is an interdisciplinary arts writer, curator and consultant active in both film and visual arts. For two decades he has shared his passion and expertise with arts organizations large and small, from art museums to film festivals, galleries to collections. He and his wife Sarah recently collaborated on a new art project, a baby boy.

“American Narrative: Trigger Zone,” Belger Arts Center

“American Narrative: Trigger Zone,” Belger Arts Center

Call it a bang-up job. Belger Arts Center’s current exhibition “American Narrative: Trigger Zone” goes full-on Top Gun — right into the danger zone. Which one exactly? No less than the fraught territory of contemporary America, a post-war culture of near permanent war, with its paradoxical passion for firearms as the safeguard of civil liberties […]

“Now/Here,” H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute

“Now/Here,” H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute

“Now/Here,” a fresh survey of 30 recent works by Kansas City artists of color, shows an interesting spectrum of both artistic media and approach, ranging from expressionism, conceptualism, figuration, geometric abstraction to cultural reinvention. Kathy Liao’s monumental mixed-media work “The Continuous Line” sets the stage in the Block’s tricky two-story main gallery. A labyrinth of […]

“Nicky Nodjoumi: The Long Day,” H&R Block Artspace

“Nicky Nodjoumi: The Long Day,” H&R Block Artspace

It’s a man’s world that Nicky Nodjoumi paints and that hasn’t been a good thing for the planet or its inhabitants. His exhibition of bold figurative oil paintings “The Long Day,” now on view at Block Artspace, burrows under the skin and into the mind with bizarre depictions of cabalistic power brokers acting out their […]

An Inclusive Picture of American Modernism

An Inclusive Picture of American Modernism

Bruce Hartman, an accomplished local museum director and collector, is helping Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, expand the canon of American art history. Hartman’s recent loans of exceptional, if little known, 20th-century Native American works from his personal collection have given Crystal Bridges’ Modern permanent collection galleries a refreshed look while showing the way forward for a more inclusive, nuanced picture of American Modernism.