Exhibits

Art of the Pandemic

Five young artists in Kansas City’s Southeast community express their emotional responses to the issues that have dominated the past year, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the deaths of people of color at the hands of police and our nation’s reckoning with a history of racial inequity and injustice. The collection of compelling, often haunting images reflects both the pain and hope shared by community and country. 

Art of the Pandemic was commissioned for an upcoming stage play by the Rev. Scott Myers, president of the board of the Westport Center for the Arts, in collaboration with Kids Spread Out for Art. Southeast Branch library assistant Fran Farah curated the exhibit. 

Art of the Pandemic
Opens: 
Thu, November 4, 2021
Closes: 
Sat, December 4, 2021
Southeast Branch

Dissident Formalisms - Armin Mühsam

Armin Mühsam’s work has evolved over time. Where once he imbued his architectural landscapes with politics, speaking to mankind’s infringement and impact on the natural world, “the message now is purely aesthetic,” he says. “It’s the creation of visually compelling compositions.” 

The striking lines and shapes of his exhibit Dissident Formalisms reflect that. Mühsam’s works continue to reference architecture and the confrontation between human geometry and nature, but much more abstractly. They also reach subtly to the past, sampling and repurposing modernist techniques of the late 19th and early 20th centuries – comparable, he says, “to the way a jazz musician would riff on a 100-year-old jazz standard, putting it into a new arrangement, maybe using some basic melodic features but then being very free and exploratory with the present composition.” 

Mühsam is a professor of painting at Northwest Missouri State University who maintains a studio in Kansas City’s West Bottoms. His artwork has been featured in exhibitions and venues across the U.S. and internationally from his native Romania to Munich, Paris, and Budapest. 
Opens: 
Sat, November 13, 2021
Closes: 
Sun, January 30, 2022
Central Library

An Artist at Home in America: Michael Mardikes’ Photographs of Thomas Hart Benton

In 1955, Thomas Hart Benton invited young photographer Michael Mardikes into his Kansas City studio and home. Of the resulting 1,080 photos Mardikes captured of the famed painter at work and relaxing with his family, only four ever were published.

Mardikes, 93, filed away the remaining negatives for 65 years. Now 32 of the photos are on display as part of the exhibit An Artist at Home in America at the Central Library.

By the time Benton and Mardikes met through a mutual acquaintance, Benton was Missouri’s most famous artist, part of the regionalist triumvirate alongside Grant Wood of Iowa and Kansan John Steuart Curry. In contrast, Mardikes, 28 at the time, worked the night shift at the Ford plant in Claycomo.

Many of the photographs chronicle Benton’s work on “Trading at Westport Landing,” a 50-by-89-inch egg tempera on canvas mural commissioned by the River Club in 1955. Mardikes made a point of closely observing Benton at work rather than questioning him about technique, but his images serve as a study in artistic process.

Mardikes ultimately decided against a career in photography and retired from a position in administration at the University of Missouri-Kansas City after 36 years. Benton made paintings, murals, drawings, and lithographs until his death in 1975 at age 85.

An Artist at Home in America is sponsored by the Richard J. Stern Foundation for the Arts. A reception will take place January 20, 2022.
Opens: 
Sat, November 20, 2021
Closes: 
Sun, May 15, 2022
Central Library

‘Nearest by Air to Everywhere’: A Tour of Kansas City’s Aviation History

Kansas City’s aviation history dates to the mid-19th century and a scene right out of Oz – the first ascension of a manned hot air balloon in the city, witnessed by thousands of people spilled onto rooftops and other high vantage points. It extends from biplanes to bombers, from dusty airfields to modern airports, from flying schools to the successful pursuit of a hometown airline, TWA. 

As the latest chapter unfolds – and construction of a new $1.5 billion, single-terminal iteration of Kansas City International Airport moves toward completion in March 2023 – this new exhibit celebrates that rich heritage, charting the arc of air travel in the city and surrounding area. Kansas City had previously been a hub of transportation by water, by overland trail (the Santa Fe) and by rail. By air, too, it became (and billed itself) “Nearest by Air to Everywhere.” 

The exhibit draws heavily from vintage photos and other images in the Library’s Missouri Valley Special Collections, and from the Kansas City Museum, the Jackson County and Overland Park historical societies and other cultural partners. 

Opens: 
Tue, June 22, 2021
Closes: 
Thu, June 1, 2023
Central Library