When Jim and Virginia Moffett began buying pictures around 1990, they were advised by Henry Adams, then curator of American art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, to “stay within your region.” Adams believed that focusing on artists with local connections would enable the Moffetts to have a superior and more organized collection. Now, a quarter-century after they began collecting, the Moffetts are concentrating on organizing various museum exhibitions [...]

Roland Sabates is an ophthalmologist and passionate collector of American, African and Latin American art.

Next to Thomas Hart Benton, George Caleb Bingham is probably the best-known artist of Missouri and the first major American painter to be based west of the Mississippi.   He was born in 1811 in Virginia and moved to Boon’s Lick, Mo., as a young boy. Even as a child, Bingham was fascinated by rivers and all the activity on them.