Launched with a call to artists in fall 2012, the Arrowhead Art Collection continues to add new work and now numbers 32 pieces.
Spearheaded by Sharron Hunt, daughter of Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt, the collection focuses on works by artists in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
Kansas City area artists, including well-known names such as Anne Lindberg, Wilbur Niewald, Philomene Bennett, Mark English and NedRa Bonds, claim the lion’s share of exposure at Arrowhead. Installed throughout the stadium, the collection’s site-specific works and purchases encompass landscapes and still lifes, abstractions, figurative works and sports-themed pieces.
In 2013 and 2014, the collection unveiled acquisitions by 26 artists; last year and early 2016 saw the addition of six more. They included photographs by Columbia, Mo.-based Noppadol Paothong, paintings and sculptures by KC artists Beth Nybeck, Robert Quackenbush and Kristin Goering , and a commissioned mural from St. Louis-based Brian Haynes.
A highlight of the recent round of acquisitions is a four-panel painting, Bluerooming (2015), by eminent African American artist Lonnie Powell. Inspired by the historic lounge’s distinguished history and Kansas City’s crucial contribution to the history of American music, the piece depicts four musicians in the heat of performance: a drummer, female vocalist, bass player and saxophonist.
Says Powell: “Bluerooming portrays the two subjects that I am inextricably a part of, jazz and my city. Though figures depicted in this polyptych are not portraits in the true sense of the word, they are inspired by musicians past and present who have performed at the Blue Room from its beginning in the 1930s to the present.”
A background of deep blues and greens lends a moody, nocturnal atmosphere to the four-by-two foot panels; Powell cropped the figures closely, imparting immediacy to their presence.
Powell, who is represented in numerous corporate and museum collections, including Sprint, H&R Block and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, is also the founder and past president of The Light in the Other Room, a collaborative of African American, Kansas City-based artists.
He is committed to continuing what he calls “the magic ignited by The Harlem Renaissance” and the ideals of its spokesperson, Aaron Douglas. “Were it not for this period in American history which was clearly a political reaction to racism and forebear of the Civil Rights Movement,” Powell wrote in a statement, “I fear there would be no evidence that African American artists existed in the United States.”
Powell describes himself as “a realist who is partial to figurative art,” and throughout his career, he has made paintings of musicians. His knowledge of Kansas City jazz and jazz artists, from Charlie Parker to Big Joe Turner, Jay McShann and Bennie Moten, is extensive. Bluerooming is meant as a reminder of “how important Kansas City was and is to the world of music,” and also speaks to Powell’s own love of the art form.
“I cannot imagine life without music,” he said. “Growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, music wafted through the whole segregated community in the forties and fifties in its churches, night clubs, schools, and a capella groups beneath the streetlights.”
Powell’s memories, his love and knowledge of music and jazz history as well as racial pride and a determination to fulfill Aaron Douglas’ call to “bare our arms and plunge them deep through laughter, through pain, through sorrow, through hope, through disappointment, into the very depths of the souls of our people,” all find expression in Bluerooming. It’s a major statement by an artist, who at 74, is at the top of his game.
Above: Bluerooming (2015), a four-panel painting by veteran Kansas City artist Lonnie Powell, is a highlight of recent acquisitions to the Arrowhead Art Collection. Photo courtesy of Arrowhead Art Collection.
