Exhibits
Backstage Pass explores how Rolling Stone—through the work of Baron Wolman, its chief photographer from 1967-70—captured and helped define one of the most important eras in music history. Through 35 framed photographs, contact sheets, and original magazine covers, it offers an opportunity to experience how Wolman and the magazine’s editors and other photographers guided the creation of the “rock star” persona from concert to cover to icon.
The exhibit is curated by Ben Ahlvers, gallery director of the Lawrence Arts Center in Lawrence, Kansas. It is co-presented by ExhibitsUSA, a program of the Mid-America Arts Alliance.
A rising tide of urban rioting in the Vietnam era finally engulfed Kansas City on April 9, 1968. For four days following the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr., the city’s predominately African-American East Side joined nearly 300 other U.S. cities in the ’60s in seeing long-simmering racial unrest erupt into violence on the streets. The toll here was high: six dead, at least 78 confirmed injured, and close to $4 million in damages and other losses.
A special Library exhibit, It Finally Happened Here, looks back at that tumultuous episode in the city’s history and the effectiveness of efforts – up to today – to address its causes.
The exhibit, now on display at Southeast Branch, will move to different Library locations throughout the year. Images and research materials were drawn from the collections of the State Historical Society of Missouri-Kansas City Research Center, LaBudde Special Collections at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, The Kansas City Call, The Kansas City Star, and the Library’s Missouri Valley Special Collections. Southeast Missouri State University history professor Joel Rhodes led the research, with contributions from Derek Donovan of The Star, Rachel Forester of the SHSMO, Kelly McEniry of the LaBudde Special Collections, and Donna Stewart of The Call.
The project follows the March 26, 2018 program Strife in the Streets: Kansas City Remembers 1968, which the Library co-presented with KSHB-41 Action News and KCPT-Kansas City PBS.
Upcoming Schedule:
Waldo Branch - On display October 16 through November 4
Westport Branch - On display November 27 through December 6
This retrospective exhibit, the last in a yearlong series curated by Kansas City Art Institute students, spotlights selected works from the rarely viewed folk art collection at Kansas City’s westside Mattie Rhodes Center. Objects range from sculpture, ceramics, textiles, and toys to masks from Latin American, Hispanic and Pueblo Indian artists of the Southwestern United States. Included are pieces made by children from the Mattie Rhodes Art Center, where educational material has been developed from pieces in the collection.
The Library’s Genevieve Guldner Gallery becomes a space to examine and explore the techniques and cultural histories revealed in the pieces. The exhibit is curated by Olivia Clanton, a Kansas City-based artist and facilitator who earned a degree in fiber from KCAI with an emphasis on socially engaged art practices.
It is underwritten by the Richard J. Stern Foundation for the Arts and Pam and Gary Gradinger.
They’re among 50 arresting images featured in the 75th annual Pictures of the Year International exhibition celebrating the work of the world’s leading photojournalists. Administered by the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri’s Missouri School of Journalism, it focuses on pivotal events of the past year and ranges from spot news to feature photos.
Co-presented by Pictures of the Year International and the Kansas City/Mid-America chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers, Pictures of the Year International is located in the Rocky and Gabriella Mountain Gallery on the second floor of Central Library.
Just a four-minute walk from Kansas City’s old First National Bank – now the home of the Central Library – some of the biggest names in American entertainment once made their way to a small photography studio and a man they trusted to cast them in just the right light.
From 1915 to 1930, Orval Hixon photographed hundreds of rising stars of vaudeville, stage, and early film. More than two dozen of them would be immortalized on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Their images, as captured by Hixon, are featured in the Library’s latest exhibit of his work in the gallery named for Hixon on the lower level of the Central Library.
Co-presented by James R. and Joyce A. Finley, Charles David and Linda Hixon, and the Richard J. Stern Foundation for the Arts – Commerce Bank, Trustee.
