Arts Tour: Kansas City, Mo.
- The new addition of the translucent Bloch Building at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is a sight to be seen against the evening sky.
The inviting smell of plump hot dogs, juicy Italian sausage and spicy bratwurst wafts across the cool air from vendor carts scattered around the neighborhood. As the crowd begins to swell, street musicians start playing everything from cellos to rusty garbage cans, creating a lively backdrop of sound. Suddenly the 60 galleries in this square-mile chunk of downtown Kansas City, Mo., throw open their doors and eager people scurry inside.
It’s a typical First Friday celebration in the Crossroads Arts District, a booming enclave that contains one of the most concentrated gallery districts in the nation. The fact that Kansas City has such a vibrant arts scene surprises most outsiders, but not its nearly half a million residents. The city is home to Hallmark Cards, Inc., which has employed thousands of artists over the last century, as well as the internationally acclaimed Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the 123-year-old Kansas City Art Institute, considered one of America’s top art schools. Couple that with the city’s moderate cost of living and friendly, small-town feel, and it’s no wonder artists from places like New York and Chicago are packing their bags and resettling here.
Although Kansas City has steadily nurtured its arts community for years, it’s just now that everything seems to finally be falling in place. “So many things are happening now,” says John O’Brien, the owner of Dolphin Gallery, who started First Fridays in the Crossroads Arts District in 2002. Galleries open from 7-9 p.m. during the first Friday of every month. “Curators are coming here and taking our artists to New York, Dallas and L.A.,” continues O’Brien, who recently moved his gallery from Crossroads to the West Bottoms neighborhood. “Local artists are choosing to stay here and outside artists are moving in.”
- Public art can be found around town, including “Bird Lives,” a statue in the Jazz District that honors music legend Charlie Parker.
It’s easy to see why. The Nelson-Atkins, acclaimed for its Asian art, European paintings and modern sculpture, recently unveiled the stunning, translucent Bloch Building, a 165,000-square-foot addition that houses the museum’s collection of African and contemporary art. Last fall, neighboring Johnson County Community College opened the doors of the 38,000-square-foot Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, quite a coup for a community college. And Kansas City’s Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art is expanding with a branch in the Crossroads.
And those are just the museums. To help nurture local artists, artist Colby Smith paired up with two businessmen a few years ago to form Review, Inc., which publishes a local visual arts magazine and provides 3,000 square feet of subsidized studio space to 13 contemporary artists in the Crossroads Arts District. The artists can use their studios for several years in exchange for an annual donation of two pieces of artwork—one to a patron linked with the artist, the other to Review. “We give artists the rare chance to work in a big studio without the financial burden, which allows them to concentrate all of their efforts into their artwork,” says Smith, who moved to Kansas City specifically to join its arts community.
For more of Arts Tour: “No Place Like Home,” pick up the October 2008 issue of AmericanStyle today.
