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.

“Marcus Cain: Borrowed Light” and “Ky Anderson: Star School,” Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art

Brooklyn-based Kansas City Art Institute alum Ky Anderson’s exhibit “Star School” is the result of a middle-of-the-night vision in which she imagined a series of paintings “filled with stars and the intricate structures used to view them.” Executed on paper and raw canvas in acrylic and oil stick, Anderson’s works veer between painting and drawing. “Stacked Viewing” on […]

March 10, 2020
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“Look Me In The Eye: Portraits of Kansas City,” Epsten Gallery

Jam-packed may fairly describe the installation at the small Epsten Gallery. Without much room for the art to breathe, the gallery goer’s experience can feel chaotic and the strength of the individual work may get lost, so, take your time because there is typically a lot to love about Kansas City artists. Curated by art […]

October 15, 2019
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“Paper Routes – Women to Watch 2020,” Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

What the artist describes as “a community of naked, plush creatures called fumblys” populate Fuko Ito’s pastel-colored, psychedelic work, and I, for one, would like to go on record as saying I’m up for this adventure anytime. Ito’s two monumental watercolor and colored pencil on paper drawings illustrate her community of what appear to be […]

August 14, 2019
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Arts News: Longtime KC Artist Anne Austin Pearce Takes New Post in California

The prolific, down-to-earth and exceptional Anne Austin Pearce, a Kansas City artist for as long as I can remember, has departed for Aliso Viego, California, to teach at Soka University, a four-year liberal arts college. Our loss is Soka’s great gain. She’s leaving behind a narrative of artistic excellence, warmth, collegiality and a 20-year teaching […]

July 11, 2019
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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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