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.

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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Honors: Angelica Sandoval

Clay’s seductive challenges reward the risk-taker. The walls of a pot or sculpture can be too thin, heavy slip may collapse an object and bad chemical reactions and accidents in the kiln can break your heart. In her porcelain sculptures, Kansas City artist Angelica Sandoval embraces these potential problems and relies on wabi-sabi, the Japanese idea of accepting and embracing imperfection.

January 2, 2018
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“Charlotte Street Foundation Fellows 2017,” Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art

The 21st iteration of the Charlotte Street Foundation Fellows exhibition, which always focuses on Kansas City artists, includes Stephen Proski, Samara Umbral and Karen McCoy. The artists were selected by a national team of arts professionals, including Bruce Hartman, the Nerman Museum’s Executive Director and Chief Curator. Independent Curator Dan Cameron, who is organizing Kansas […]

December 19, 2017
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