Author: Brian Hearn
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American Indian Art Joins Crossroads First Fridays
One of the best-kept secrets you can discover on First Fridays is housed in a company headquarters at 310 W. 19th Terrace. In fall 2017, Travois, a Kansas City-based consulting firm focused on promoting housing and economic development in Native American communities, launched an intertribal, international exhibition series dedicated to indigenous artists. It encompasses drawing, painting, textiles, architecture, jewelry, sculpture and photography, curated by experts in the field.
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Emerging Artists in the Spotlight – Let Your Freak Flag Fly at Alter: Art Space
It’s been called Big Fun Art and it’s making major waves throughout the art world. Kansas City has a fresh new venue for this multidisciplinary ain’t-nothin’-but-a-party art movement — that is, if you can find it. Enter Alter: Art Space, quite literally birthed last summer in the West Bottoms by recent Kansas City Art Institute graduates, Boi Boy and Bo Hubbard, who proudly refer to themselves as its “moms.”
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The High Art of the Throw-Away
Six artists make the most of materials found, discarded, avoided or unappreciated in the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art’s “Ephemera” exhibit, which opened in time to be seen by visitors to the 27th International Sculpture Conference, from Oct. 25 through 28, in Kansas City. Presented in pairs in three spacious first floor galleries, the artists source wildly different artistic media from the throw-away world of global capitalism or forgotten elements of nature.
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Cat Mahari: Centering Blackness
If you have seen Cat Mahari perform, you don’t forget. True to her name, she moves with a fierce feline swagger. Her presence in a room can be equivalent to a mic drop. Fearless? Yes. Challenging? Definitely. Mahari is a battle-tested warrior. When she roars her truth you will pay attention. Her confidence is grounded in lived, embodied experience and intense study. It comes through her work as “centering blackness.”
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Kansas City and the Rise of Gay Rights
A small exhibition about an outsized legacy proves that small groups of committed people can change the world in profound ways. “Making History: Kansas City and the Rise of Gay Rights” at the Miller Nichols Library tells the story of how Kansas City became the unlikely site of the first national organizing efforts for LGBT rights more than 50 years ago. The 12 exhibition panels begin by asking the question, “How does change happen?”
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“Separate And Not Equal”
If you needed a compelling reason to justify public funding for the arts, look no further than KU’s Spencer Museum of Art this summer. Thanks to a six-figure grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Spencer Museum will offer two in-depth K-12 teacher workshops this summer on the subject of “Native American and African-American Educational Experiences in Kansas, 1830 – 1960.”