Jeff Aeling, “Virga, Hwy 56, New Mexico” (2001), oil on panel; 42 x 56”, is part of the exhibit “Bones, Blooms and Biomes” at the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art. (collection Daum Museum of Contemporary Art)
This fall, museums across the region are buzzing with exceptional exhibitions that highlight everything from groundbreaking contemporary work to timeless classics. Whether you’re drawn to emerging local talent or renowned national artists, these are the shows worth planning a trip for.
Bones, Blooms, and Biomes, June 21 – Dec. 16, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, www.daummuseum.org
Georgia O’Keeffe’s powerful legacy carries on this year at the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art through various artists who have reimagined the natural motifs O’Keeffe spent a career investigating. In “Bones, Blooms, and Biomes,” diverse artists showcase a variety of cultural perspectives, media and eras through two- and three-dimensional portrayals of such themes as life, death and renewal. Objects and images featuring ceramic bones, lush floral forms and expansive landscapes occupy the gallery space, leaving viewers in awe of both the artworks and of nature itself.
The exhibition opens a dialogue that O’Keeffe started a century ago, linking her 20th-century American experience to our shared globalized experience in the 21st. As O’Keeffe herself said, “I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at — not copy it.” The same can be said about the artists’ approaches in this show.
In “Bones, Blooms, and Biomes,” viewers can contemplate the idea of the sublime through landscapes and renderings of nature that reflect the capacity of humanity and spirituality in our precarious world. Through these contemporary investigations into awe and nature and inspired by O’Keeffe’s modernist experiments, we can better understand identity, memory and transformation. — Ashley Lindeman
Spectrum, June 21 – Dec. 16, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, www.daummuseum.org
Daum Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibition “Spectrum” splashes color onto even the darkest and grayest of days. Featuring artworks from the Daum collection, the exhibition poses questions about color’s function in our lives. “Spectrum” proves that color not only provides a framework for how we see things, but it also helps us relate to one another and our surroundings. The featured artists encourage viewers to discuss and conceptualize their relationships to such concepts as vibrancy, saturation, hue, gradient and the ways in which color affects memory and identity. As the pieces demonstrate, colors can harmonize, clash, amplify or “dissolve into each other.”
Investigations into color offer infinite interpretations of its impact both contextually and historically. Built upon the foundation of 20th-century color studies by Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian and Josef Albers, “Spectrum” invites viewers to form their own connections to color in art history and in their own lives. The exhibition demonstrates that “color, like human connection, is never static or singular. Instead, it is a relationship that is always shifting, responding, and reshaping as it encounters new contexts and new perspectives.” While viewers can delve into the complexities of color theory in this show, they can also enjoy the artwork by comparing palettes to their own eye color or outfit. — Ashley Lindeman
Little Black Dress at 100, June 28 – Nov. 30, Wichita Art Museum, wichitaartmuseum.org
Iconic women’s fashion designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s “little black dress” caused a chic sensation when it first appeared on the cover of Vogue magazine in October 1926. The LBD’s surprising co-option of the darkest color — associated with the traditional garments of servants and those in mourning — daringly transformed a seemingly simple piece of women’s wear into an ingenious blank slate of style, whereupon both universal and more subtle individual qualities could be expressed by its instantly refined wearer.
Ten decades later, Chanel’s fashion staple, as well as the sophisticated yet accessible aura surrounding it, are accordingly celebrated in “Little Black Dress at 100,” co-organized by the Wichita Art Museum, the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum and Kansas State University’s Historic Costume and Textile Museum. The exhibition offers visitors a fetching spectrum of LBDs to compare, discuss and generally ooh and ah over, ranging from pricey examples fit for a celebrity (or at least the chance to feel like one), to more affordable and commonplace versions that absolutely still have that certain something. — Brian McTavish
Around the Way Folk: Saints in Uncommon Places, July 15 – Nov. 1, Mulvane Art Museum, Topeka, www.mulvaneartmuseum.org
Kansas City Artist Harold Smith rewrites art history as he reimagines iconic work through a Black lens, in which white protagonists are replaced with Black ones. One such painting merges the familiar “American Gothic” with Smith’s signature vivid colors and piercing eyes. The realism of the original painting is replaced with thick, expressive brushstrokes that blend figure and abstraction. According to Smith, around the way folk are the people who have surrounded him throughout his life. “Around the Way Folk” exhibits Smith’s newest work and “shines a spotlight on those who have often been excluded from art.” — Emily Spradling
Abhidnya Ghuge, July 22 – Dec. 6, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, ulrich.wichita.edu
An Abhidnya “Abhi” Ghuge installation is on display at Wichita State University’s Ulrich Museum of Art through early December. Ghuge’s monumental piece, created with approximately 10,000 rolled woodblock prints and wired infrastructure, dominates the gallery, summoning awe and contemplation. Born in India and previously a dermatologist, Ghuge dips into her past experiences to urge audiences to consider the value of human life, especially women’s lives. She conceptualizes ephemerality and its relationship to humanity.
The artist’s process consists of drawing and carving henna-style designs on woodblocks for printing onto dry paper plates. She blends archival oil-based ink onto the woodblock, modifying the pigment’s thickness on each block to create diverse patterns. Ghuge then coats both sides of the paper plates with acrylic polymer, promoting longevity in the otherwise transient material.
Hung overhead, the artwork reconceptualizes our experience of the gallery space. Ghuge encourages her viewers to look closely to recognize how something as simple as a disposable paper plate can be reimagined into a treasure. With woodcut technology dating back to fifth-century China, she reveals the importance of understanding a medium from different vantage points and offers a moment for introspections on such themes as belonging, community, time and value. — Ashley Lindeman
Afterimage, July 26, 2025 – Oct. 20, 2025, Museum of Art + Light, Manhattan, Kansas, www.artlightmuseum.org
The Museum of Art + Light’s “Afterimage” features multimedia artwork by Israeli American artist Rae Stern. Using handmade paper of different thicknesses, the backlit works reveal ghostly images of Israel, inspired by history and the present day.
During a residency at Englewood Arts, Stern had access to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum. There she discovered a photo album and letters from a U.S. diplomat who lived in Israel during the tumultuous days of 1948, which saw the end of British occupation of Palestine, the creation of the state of Israel and the expulsion of Palestinians. Stern visited Israel to see the locations in the photo album and compare them to the present day. Her artworks address the long history of the territories, including Napoleon’s siege of Acre, Roman aqueducts in Caesarea, minefields in the contested Golan Heights, and Hostage Square, the site of ongoing protests. Actual afterimages are the light that one sees when closing the eyes; for Stern “it becomes a metaphor for the lingering imprint of place.” Stern says she “does not attempt to present a singular narrative of the land. Instead, she invites reflection on how histories are constructed, and how meaning persists or dissolves across time and space.” — Neil Thrun
Neo-Techne: Art in the Age of the Machine, July 26, 2025 – Feb. 16, 2026, Museum of Art + Light, Manhattan, www.artlightmuseum.org
We live in a digital world and that includes the art world, which keeps finding new ways to inform, imbue and even reshape artistic skill and practice with the latest digital technology. For a cool clue as to how far the digital art world has come and where it might be headed, check out “Neo-Techne: Art in the Age of the Machine.”
The exhibition at the Museum of Art + Light’s 15,000-square-foot De Coded Gallery features pieces by cutting-edge digital artists Parin Heidari, Des Lucréce, William Mapan, Osinachi and Claire Silver.
“This exhibit represents the variety of ways these artists use digital tools to approach their creations and expand the conceptual frameworks of contemporary art, opening new possibilities for how we make, think, and feel through technology,” said Jori Louise Cheville, director of curatorial affairs at the Museum of Art + Light, in a statement.
For anyone wondering, “techne” in ancient Greece denoted art, craft or skill, and became the root of the English word, technology. You’ve come a long way, techne. — Brian McTavish
Everything Must Go: Justin Favela’s Closeout Blowout Re-Grand Opening, Aug. 4 – Dec. 6, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, ulrich.wichita.edu
Cartonería, or building with papier-mâché, à la piñatas, is a fantastical compositional and conceptual mainstay of Justin Favela’s work. A Joan Mitchell Fellowship recipient, Favela notes that his work examines his own queer, Latinx, Guatemalan Mexican American background. On a broader level, his large-scale sculptures, such as a life-sized lowrider, for instance, murals and installations investigate LGBTQ and Latinx cultural markers and their intersection with popular culture at large. Some of his site-specific work at Wisconsin’s John Michael Kohler Arts Center included food, such as nachos, which Favela says emerged from food “born” on the Mexican-United States border. His work and residencies typically engage participation from the community where he has studied the local history.
At the Des Moines Art Center exhibition “Central American,” a wordplay on both his background and Iowa’s geographic location, his work included a giant taco pizza, according to Favela, a gustatory Iowa invention and mixture of cultural and culinary creativities he tried for the first time in Des Moines. Murals included images of cornfields, a nod to the relationship between Iowa’s Central American workers and Iowa agriculture. Favela will create a site-specific work at the Ulrich. — Dana Self
Kansas Triennial, Aug. 5, 2025 – May 31, 2026, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, beach.k-state.edu
Kansas State University’s Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art hosts an inaugural exhibition and new Kansas Triennial series this year, titled “Kansas Triennial 25/26.” The exhibition features four Kansas artists from Lawrence and Wichita: Mona Cliff, Mark Cowardin, Poppy DeltaDawn and Ann Resnick. The exhibition and the new tradition declare a longstanding commitment to honoring regional artists, land and culture, strengthening a connection between Kansas’ dynamic past and present.
Kent Michael Smith, director of the Beach Museum of Art and curator of the triennial exhibition said, “The Kansas Triennial isn’t just an exhibition — it’s a platform. It gives us the chance to pause every few years and take stock of what artists in this state are doing, what they’re grappling with and how they’re innovating.”
The artworks in the Kansas Triennial range in media from sculpture and beadwork to woodburning and weaving. Mona Cliff’s beadwork wall hangings combine traditional Indigenous techniques with contemporary design. Mark Cowardin’s sculptural installations incorporate functional elements like ladders and lighting for both utility and metaphor, navigating such themes as consumption and sacredness. Poppy DeltaDawn’s woven textiles explore identity, autonomy, resistance and perseverance. Ann Resnick’s pyrography and monoprints share her perspective on collective memory and the passage of time. — Ashley Lindeman
“Jaqueline Bishop: “Above the Fruited Plain,” Aug. 15 – Nov. 2, Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, www.albrecht-kemper.org
“Scientists did not record climate change until the late 19th century which could mean that the act of landscape destruction might only be recorded in Art History,” explains Jacqueline Bishop in her artist statement for “Above the Fruited Plain.” This solo exhibition at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art pulls from Bishop’s travels and her dedication to expressing the realities of climate change through art. Her large-scale paintings, detailed prints and vintage cotton dresses are layered with thematic depth. By using the ancient Egyptian pigment Alizarin crimson in her large-scale paintings, she underscores the unnerving beauty of our threatened natural world, like the vivid hues from a smoggy sunset. Additionally, her vintage cotton dresses represent the years of forced labor in cotton harvesting.
Bishop is one of the Visionary Imagists of the contemporary American South, bringing her unique aesthetic and voice to the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art. “Above the Fruited Plain” is showing from Aug. 15 – Nov. 2, 2025. There is an opening reception on Aug. 15 from 4 – 7 p.m., as well as an artist talk with Bishop on Saturday Aug. 16 at 1 p.m. — Emily Spradling
Abstract Expressionists: The Women, Aug. 23 – Nov. 16, Wichita Art Museum, wichitaartmuseum.org
The powerhouse women of Abstract Expressionism were never here to just play, and their contributions to the canon cannot be overstated. Curated by well-known art historian and curator Ellen G. Landau, under the auspices of the American Federation of the Arts, the works are borrowed from the Christian Levett Collection and the Femmes Artistes du Musée de Mougins (FAMM), in southern France, founded by the philanthropist and collector Levett. The exhibition at the Wichita Art Museum includes the muscular gestural styles of Grace Hartigan, Lee Krasner and Joan Mitchell and the lyrical fluidity of Helen Frankenthaler’s paintings, and many more artists whose work defined the post-war movement, which historically has often been mainly attributed to and romanticized by the mythology created around Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and other male painters. The paintings in this exhibition exemplify the bold gestures, colors, canvas size and action painting of the movement, as these women worked and innovated throughout the post-war years in the 1940s through the ’70s. This not-to-be-missed exhibition, which includes 40-plus works by 30 women, is the visual articulation of this seminal American movement. Landau, along with Joan M. Marter, has authored an accompanying book with timelines and artist biographies. — Dana Self
My Mother’s Tongue Ties Me Together, Aug. 26, 2025 – Jan. 4, 2026, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, www.spencerart.ku.edu
The Charlotte Street 2025 Visual Artist Award recipients will gather for an exhibition at the Spencer Museum titled “My Mother’s Tongue Ties Me Together.” This year’s recipients of the annual award include Noelle Choy, Hùng Lê and Merry Sun. The exhibition promises to include a wide range of mediums and focus on installation.
Noelle Choy, painting professor at the Kansas City Art Institute, explores her own personal history and family with sculptures made of found objects, castings, photography and paint. Vietnamese artist Hùng Lê’s work mixes textiles and collage to explore the history of the American war in Vietnam, imagining a world where his country never experienced such destruction. Chinese artist Merry Sun’s work explores migration and displacement through “interactive soundscapes” that encourage the viewer to move around the space and experience the artwork from multiple perspectives.
Installation-based work like this can be difficult to describe, especially before the installations are even completed. The medium lends itself to personal experience, and with the vetting of Kansas City’s most prestigious art award (now in its 28th year), you can be sure this will be an experience not to be missed. — Neil Thrun
Jennie C. Jones: A Line When Broken Begins Again and Other Octaves: Curated by Jennie C. Jones, Sept. 5, 2025 – Feb. 1, 2026, The Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, pulitzerarts.org
Jennie C. Jones draws lines between the visual and the auditory through her paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations. In a unique twist, Jones will be both a featured artist in the exhibit “A Line When Broken Begins Again,” and a curator of the exhibit “Other Octaves” exhibition at Pulitzer Arts Foundation.
“A Line When Broken Begins Again” features Jones’ new and existing pieces, as well as a site-specific response to “the Pulitzer’s Tadao Ando-designed building and Ellsworth Kelly’s “Blue Black” from the museum’s permanent collection.” Thematically, Jones delves into visual art and musical histories through her abstract geometric forms and nontraditional materials.
Jones’ curated exhibition “Other Octaves” explores some of her inspirations and career reference points. These artists, working in the United States during the 1960s and ’70s, include Carmen Herrera, Agnes Martin, Martin Puryear, Alma Thomas and Mildred Thompson. — Emily Spradling
Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection, Sept. 12, 2025 – Jan. 5, 2026, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, www.kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu
The Shah Garg Collection, begun by former tech executive Komal Shah with her husband Gaurav Garg, focuses on women artists and women artists of color, amplifying their work and contributions across multiple decades. The foundation “works to bring greater recognition to art by women and to rectify the underrepresentation of women in public collections, exhibitions, and art historical narratives.” While the private collection owns a large number of works, this iteration of the exhibition will include more than 50 of those, drawing from work by significant artists such as Elizabeth Murray, Howardena Pindell, Tschabalala Self, Sarah Sze, Rina Banerjee, Julie Mehretu, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Pat Steir, Lorna Simpson and Toshiko Takaezu, to name just a few. The exhibition, which is international in scope, includes artists whose work examines multiple techniques and crosses boundaries between styles, decades and materials.
Abstraction, the female body, feminism, conceptual photography, drawings, paintings, mixed-media, textiles and sculpture are all represented in this dynamic collection. The exhibition has been shown at Berkeley’s BAMPFA and in New York City and will travel to Washington, D.C., and Indianapolis after St. Louis. It’s an excellent opportunity to examine the influences between and among women artists of the past 7-plus decades. A beautifully illustrated book with multiple essays and artists’ texts about their inspirations and influences has been published in conjunction with the exhibition. — Dana Self
Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture, Sept. 13, 2025 – Jan. 26, 2026, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, crystalbridges.org
What do athletes and their fans have in common with art and design? Bring yourself up to speed at this ambitious exhibition involving more than 150 diverse works of art, sports paraphernalia and special events.
“Sports have a unique ability to connect us all…” said Austen Barron Bailly, chief curator at Crystal Bridges Museum, in a statement. “And this exhibition drives us to explore the games we love through the creative perspectives of artists and designers. We encourage everyone to engage with the galleries … and to connect through the universal language of sports.”
Organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, “Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture” draws observant and entertaining parallels between the passions of the athlete and the artist, each of whom strives to create something authentic and personal in the moment and, perhaps, even transcend it.
Opening events include a Sept. 11 lecture by two-time Olympic gold medalist and FIFA Women’s World Cup champion Mia Hamm and a Sept. 13 celebration filled with artmaking, a marching band and the opportunity to mingle with athletes and team mascots.
Pro tip: Don’t leave the exhibition until experiencing the immersive “reenactment” of the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. Spoiler: She won! — Brian McTavish
Alaa Kiki Salem: At The Last Sky opening Oct. 2025, The Luminary, St. Louis, theluminaryarts.com
Alaa Kiki Salem is a Palestinian St. Louis-based artist whose upcoming exhibit “At the Last Sky” will deal with her experience as a Middle Eastern artist living in the Midwest. Her dreamy, floating versions of flying carpets and other historical references, using textiles, photography and other media, are meant to “examine memory as a contested site — a terrain of power, loss and resilience.” This is the first one-person exhibition by a Palestinian woman in St. Louis, and will include artist talks, panel discussions and interactive workshops. Salem was a 2024-2025 Research and Development artist-in-residence at the Luminary, whose mission is to engage with artists dealing with the crucial concerns of our times on a global level. It also wants to “model a more equitable and interconnected art world,” and Salem’s art promises to be both beautiful and provocative. — Elisabeth Kirsch
Anselm Kiefer: Becoming the Sea, Oct. 18, 2025 – Jan. 25, 2026, Saint Louis Art Museum, www.slam.org
The Saint Louis Art Museum will host “Becoming the Sea,” a retrospective of legendary German artist Anslem Kiefer, now 80 years old. This will be Kiefer’s first retrospective in America in more than 20 years. The exhibition will include more than 40 works, some from the museum’s collection and many on loan from other museums and private collections, including 20 made in the last five years and five “monumental site-specific paintings” that demand some of the museum’s largest spaces.
Inspired by the Rhine River and St Louis’ own Mississippi River, the exhibition will feature many paintings of oceans and rivers in Kiefer’s iconic neo-expressionist style, that merges the raw textural and sculptural qualities of paint, while still depicting clearly visible landscapes and seascapes. This is not the first time that Kiefer has exhibited at the Saint Louis Art Museum; one of his first major American exhibitions was at the museum in 1991, and SLAM has kept collecting his works in the decades since. The exhibition will feature a painting of the Mississippi River that was inspired by Kiefer’s 1991 visit to St. Louis, during which he took a trip up the river to see the then newly created lock and dam complex. — Neil Thrun
The Greatest Wildlife Photographs, Nov. 22, 2025 – June 7, 2026, The Momentary, Bentonville, Arkansas, themomentary.org
While most of us are familiar with National Geographic Magazine and its photographs of animals, it seems more important than ever to linger and take a second look at these images. Our knowledge of animal behavior is growing; we increasingly realize that their intelligence and genius is beyond anything imagined even a few years ago. Pictured within their natural environment, we are also made aware of the importance of regional habitats.
Which makes this exhibit unduly poignant. You’d have to be living under a rock not to know that many of the animals being shown — lions, whales, various birds — are facing extinction, along with their locales.
We will never see many of these animals in person. The photographers all went to extraordinary lengths to locate their subjects, and the signage next to the images explains their processes. Less than 1,500 cassowaries are left in the wild. The 150 pound, 5 1/2-foot-tall flightless birds that live in the tropical forests of Guinea are presented by Christian Ziegler, and they must be seen to be believed. Paul Nicklen waited a long time before spotting a white spirit bear in the Great Bear Rainforest. The rest of the wildlife photographs have stories of their own. — Elisabeth Kirsch
