Events

During the Civil War Missouri was a state divided, suffering from a fractured identity and caught up in a struggle of no quarter between its battling factions. That violent period of near-anarchy is examined in the traveling exhibit A State Divided: The Civil War in Missouri, a joint effort of the Missouri Humanities Council and the Missouri History Museum.

This colorful and informative exhibit follows the “bushwhackers” and “Jayhawkers” whose bitter enmity continues to color the relations between Missourians and Kansans.

Fred Geary (1894-1955) attended the Kansas City Art Institute and worked as a commercial artist for the Fred Harvey Company in Union Station. Geary became caught up in the wood engraving movement that became popular in the U.S. in the 1930s and in his spare time produced exquisite depictions of small-town life and Missouri landscapes and landmarks.

Easily and cheaply reproduced, woodcuts put art into the hands of working-class Americans.

A new exhibit based on the Kansas City Star Magazine series and book by Steve Paul. It features 22-by-28-inch reproductions of pages from the book, which celebrates Kansas City’s architectural scene one letter at a time.

This exhibit is on display in the Fifth Floor Exhibit Space.

The newest exhibition of the Orval Hixon Gallery, New Compositions: The Dance Portraiture of Orval Hixon, is on display from June 11, 2011 through 2013 at the Central Library, 14 W. 10th St. The exhibit features a rich selection of Hixon’s portraits, including images of some of the best-known dancers of his time.

To most local landscape architects, Hare & Hare is a household name. The firm has left an indelible mark on some of the most iconic and often-visited areas of Kansas City—the Country Club Plaza, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Loose Park, Ward Parkway, and Mission Hills among them.

In advance of this year’s Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, audiences can bone up on the Bard with a screening of the classic film A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Directed in 1935 by the great stage director Max Reinhardt this version stars Dick Powell, Olivia de Havilland, Joe E. Brown, James Cagney (as Bottom), and Mickey Rooney (as Puck).

The film won Academy Awards and nearly 80 years after its release is still regarded as one of the best movie adaptations ever of a Shakespeare play.

Sunday Family Movie
Join us for our weekly family movie on Sunday afternoon. This week's selection is "We Bought a Zoo".

On the eve of the 136th anniversary of the famous “Last Stand,” retired National Park Service Superintendent Paul L. Hedren asks: Was General George Custer’s defeat at the Little Bighorn on June 26, 1876, the greatest American Indian military victory? Or was it the beginning of the end of Sioux Country as the native peoples knew it?