Dana Self

Dana Self is an arts writer who was a contemporary art curator for more than 13 years in Kansas, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Tennessee museums, including the Kemper Museum. She has organized about 100 exhibitions of emerging and mid career artists. She is currently marketing director for UMKC’s Conservatory of Music and Dance.

When Women Ruled the World: An Interview with Egyptologist Kara Cooney

Egyptologist Kara Cooney’s March 19 talk at the Kauffman Center, “When Women Ruled the World,” begs today’s burning question: When WILL women rule the world? What do Egyptian queens have to do with women today, and how do we consider their rule in historical and contemporary context? If 2018 was the year of the woman, […]

March 12, 2019
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“Polly Apfelbaum: Waiting for the UFOS (a space between landscape and a bunch of flowers),” Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

Polly Apfelbaum is an iconoclast, refreshingly devoid of bullshit, and known for her wildly exuberant installations in which the floor is as important, or more, than the walls. Her installation-based work always feels honest rather than coolly distant yet is layered with process and content. Las Vegas showgirls, the cartoon Powerpuff Girls, music, literature, film, […]

March 4, 2019
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Arts News: Nelson-Atkins Acquires Guerilla Girls Portfolio

The Guerrilla Girls are rock stars. I once saw them at a NYC College Arts Association conference riding the hotel escalator wearing their trademark gorilla masks and black clothing. I was hoping they’d do something radical, but maybe they were just on their way to a panel, or maybe they were buying art books. Or maybe I had missed an excellent protest. At any rate, they were cool.

November 2, 2018
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“Michael Rees: Pneumatopia,” Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art

Michael Rees is a modern romantic, his art lives in the spaces between science, philosophy, a kind of spatial mythology, visual and emotional pleasure (and sometimes frustration), and transitional relationships. In this sculptural, installation-based exhibition, we stand on a threshold, several in fact, of narratives and anti-narratives where time and space tend to open and close […]

August 27, 2018
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Arts News: Charlotte Street 2018 Visual Artist Awards

In late February, the Charlotte Street Foundation announced three recipients of its 2018 Visual Artist awards. Each received an unrestricted cash award of $10,000, and the winners’ works will be featured in the 2018 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards Exhibition later this year at H&R Block Artspace. The three winners — Jillian Youngbird, Jarrett Mellenbruch […]

May 4, 2018
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“FACE: Ed Blackburn · Archie Scott Gobber · Elizabeth ‘Grandma’ Layton · Douglas Miles · Carlos Vega,” Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art

We count on artists to interrupt the smooth narratives fed to us by conventional media. The artists in this small exhibition of work from the Nerman collection each face, or confront, a different figure, event, or cultural zeitgeist. Douglas Miles’ “Douglas Miles Jr. at the Fort” (2018) is a black and white photo of the […]

April 4, 2018
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