Visual Arts

On this Central Standard, meet the new quarter-time African Art curator at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Nii Quarcoopome. He’s seeing us on the side while staying in a committed relationship with the DIA in Detroit.

In this Kemper ARTcast, Kemper Museum Chief Curator Barbara O’Brien interviews Brooklyn-based artist Eric Fertman, who made a conscious decision to stay in New York after graduating with a BFA from Cooper Union in 1997. This decision was important in his success as it allowed him to stay connected to a supportive group of people. “One person gets their foot in the door, and then they pull their friends in with them.”

From African refugee camps to Alzheimer’s clinics to returning vets from Iraq and Afghanistan, discoveries in the field of art therapy are helping to change lives.

Seventy years ago, on February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This action, just a few months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, forced an estimated 120,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps.

Kansas-based artist Roger Shimomura was one of them. A young child at the time, the memories of barbed wire and guard towers have influenced his artwork ever since. It's an early afternoon in January. Roger Shimomura, with spiky white hair, a goatee, and round glasses stands near a long table at Lawrence Lithography Workshop on Kansas City’s east side. Spread out before him on creamy sheets of paper are two brightly colored prints.

National Geographic staff photographer Annie Griffiths says she's "learned that even without a shared language, it’s easy to let people know that their children are beautiful, their homes are lovely…and that their stories are worth sharing with the world.”

On Wednesday the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art announced results of a design contest for a temporary pavilion to coincide with the museum’s exhibition Inventing the Modern World: Decorative Arts at the World’s Fairs 1851–1939, opening in mid-April.

Each year the Historic Kansas City Foundation releases a list of the "most endangered" structures in an effort to raise awareness of the city's historic buildings.