Exhibits

Sanctuaries

Kansas City artist Amy Kligman draws from her personal experiences in exploring the environments, elements, and symbolism that generate nontraditional spaces for reverence.

Kligman, executive/artistic director of the Charlotte Street Foundation, reflects on the cues that comfort, refresh, and generate a deeper sense of connection to the outside world. Some are commonplace: contemplations on nature and the community of a shared meal. Others, while familiar, are perhaps less recognized as spiritual: deep engagement in the writings of others and the simple act of sinking blissfully into blankets and pillows.

The nine-week exhibit in the Central Library’s Guldner Gallery runs concurrently with kaleidoscope by Kligman’s husband Misha Kligman.

Opens: 
Sat, January 18, 2020
Closes: 
Sun, March 22, 2020
Central Library

kaleidoscope

Misha Kligman’s large-scale installation features individual painted paper tiles organized into a grid, a panoramic arrangement of stained and marked surfaces that gives way to photographic snapshots. Printed images of blooming flowers, children, political protests and ubiquitous landscapes mingle with painted abstractions. 

The work imagines discrete moments gathered into a cinematic experience in which banality and significance dissolve into each other.

The Soviet-born Kligman recently completed his residency at the nonprofit Studios Inc in Kansas City, and is a co-founder and former co-director of Plug Projects. His exhibit in the Central Library’s Mountain Galllery runs concurrently with Sanctuaries by his wife Amy Kligman.

Opens: 
Sat, January 18, 2020
Closes: 
Sun, March 22, 2020

Kansas City's Guadalupe Centers: A Century of Serving the Latino Community

For a century, Kansas City’s westside Guadalupe Center—now Guadalupe Centers, Inc.—has dedicated itself to improving the quality of life and celebrating the cultural heritage of the city’s Latino and immigrant population. Founded in 1919, it’s the longest continuously running Latino-serving organization in the country.

This yearlong exhibit chronicles that rich history and Guadalupe Centers’ role in creating and sustaining a vibrant Latino community. It is curated by Sandra I. Enríquez, an assistant history professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and director of the university’s public history emphasis; Theresa Torres, an associate professor of Latinx and Latin American studies and sociology at UMKC; and UMKC master’s student Hunter Albright. Graduate and undergraduate history students at UMKC are contributing curators.

The exhibit is designed by Daisy Hernandez and Paul Tosh, a UMKC associate professor of studio art.
 

Opens: 
Sun, May 26, 2019
Closes: 
Sun, May 31, 2020
Central Library