KC STUDIO

July 4, 2018

A Novel Approach

In July 1814, 16-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin departed her home in England and travelled to France with the already married poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Two years later, during the summer of 1816, they took up residence in Geneva, Switzerland, where, housebound by abnormally low temperatures that earned 1816 the epithet, “the year without a summer,” their companion George Gordon (Lord) Byron, suggested that the group engage in writing ghost stories.

July 3, 2018

Art of Life @ 50+: Executive Director’s Letter, July/August 2018

Welcome back! It’s time to seize the day, to travel, take a day trip to Crystal Bridges or a week-long trip to New York City..

July 3, 2018

Kansas City’s Pipe Organs in the Limelight

If Kansas City remains a too-little-known gem among American cities, the same may be true of its organ and church-music scenes.

July 3, 2018

Arts News: Have Grant, Will Travel

Germany, Sweden, Iceland and the Netherlands are just some of the destinations for this year’s round of grant recipients from the Lighton International Artists Exchange..

July 2, 2018

2018 Kansas City Flatfile & Digitalfile

It’s a hands-on exhibit, put on by Block Artspace for the ninth time in 18 years. The biennial Kansas City Flatfile & Digitalfile is a..

July 2, 2018

Fringe Effect

Without KC Fringe, the local theater scene would not be what it is. The Fringe, which will present its 14th annual potpourri of performances, film, visual arts and youth activities spanning 10 days in July, got off to an unwieldy start in its inaugural year— mainly because nobody had attempted a fringe festival in Kansas City before. KC Fringe, like other fringe fests around the country, took its cue from the Mother Ship: The Edinburgh Fringe, which began in 1947 in Scotland.

July 2, 2018

Mona Hatoum: Reimagining the Familiar

Can a wheelchair pose a threat? Does menace lie in a bunk bed? Is there a hidden agenda lurking in a kitchen — as an ominous electric buzz humming through chairs and tables suggests? In the art of Mona Hatoum, the familiar can be disorienting and unsettling, challenging our assumptions and upending our expectations. “Terra Infirma,” an exhibition on view at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis through Aug. 11, spans the four-decade career of the Palestinian multimedia and installation artist.

Articles

July 2, 2018

Arts Marketing Goes to the Dogs

Have you noticed how pets and other animals are everywhere? In addition to ubiquitous social media postings about silly pets and media stories extolling the latest sweet, brave or otherwise inspirational animal in the news, critters are helping to market all manner of goods and services these days. The art world has taken heed.

July 2, 2018

‘My Happiness’ a Kansas City Hit

Sixty-five years ago, an assembler at the machine shop M.B. Parker Co. walked into Memphis Recording Service and paid $3.98 to play guitar and sing two songs that were recorded onto a lacquer disc. That assembler was 18-year-old Elvis Presley, and this self-financed session on July 16, 1953 (more than $37 in today’s dollars), eventually led to his signing to Memphis Recording Service’s record label, Sun Records.