Harold Smith

Harold Smith is an educator and multimedia artist who lives and works in the Kansas City area. Most of his work is focused on his experience within the American black experience.

“Real Black: A spectrum of the Black present,” UMKC Gallery of Art

I’m not real, I’m just like you. You don’t exist in this society. If you did your people wouldn’t be seeking equal rights. You’re not real, if you were you’d have some status among the nations of the world. So we are both myths.” —Sun Ra While Sun-Ra claimed to be from Saturn and passed […]

October 27, 2020
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“Kwanza Humphrey: The Human Experience,” Bunker Center for the Arts

In the last few years in museums and galleries across the nation, figurative portraiture by Black American artists has been enjoying a renaissance and long overdue attention from curators, academicians, and collectors. Kansas City is not absent in this renaissance, and one of the artists we can thank for that is gifted painter Kwanza Humphrey.

September 21, 2020
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The Challenges of Black Gallery Ownership in Kansas City

Only three of the galleries in Kansas City are owned and operated by African Americans; joining Ron Chaney’s EthnicArt Gallery, two are owned by Black women, who face the double-edged sword of structural racism and structural sexism.

July 14, 2020
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Honors: Emiel Cleaver

Emiel Cleaver has used his video production skills to educate and enlighten by casting a light on Kansas City’s rich, yet complex, Black history. In addition to a critically acclaimed documentary on the Black political organization, Freedom Incorporated, Cleaver has produced documentaries on Bruce R. Watkins and the historic First Baptist Church in Kansas City, Kansas.

May 18, 2020
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Building a More Open, Inclusive and Diverse Arts Scene

Since he began collecting art in the early 1990s, Dwight Smith has established himself as one of the leading collectors in Kansas City, specializing in works by women artists and artists of color. Smith is a fixture at art openings and events.

May 13, 2020
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‘Whiteout’: An Artist’s Frank Memoir About His Family’s Racist Past

“My family arose from a line that defines white privilege and power, in a place of authority that has twisted the lives of many. Over generations, my family helped shape the Jim Crow laws in Alabama, convict the innocent and protect the guilty. They profited from slavery, racial terror, the labor of hired convicts, the prison leasing system and took full advantage of all the other perks that go with wealth and easy access to the powerful.”

April 2, 2020
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