Kansas City’s art scene is poised for a bountiful harvest this autumn with an impressive lineup of visual art exhibitions — many of which focus on the earth, land, motherhood and the elements.
We are in for a season of reconnection and self-reflection, so if you need to slow down from a busy summer, check out our guide to must-see art exhibits and spend a day quietly connecting with your creative side.
"The Edge of Your Field" by DeAnna Skedel
“Sensual, imaginative, and sublime” are the words that come to mind immediately after viewing the work of Kansas City-based mixed media painter and art educator DeAnna Skedel.
On view now at the Bunker Center for the Arts, “The Edge of Your Field” is a retrospective of Skedel’s diverse practice that experiments relentlessly with various media, including collage, painting, and printmaking.
The edge, in this sense, is not only the end of what one’s eyes can reach, but of one’s existing perspective as well. Blending figures with atmospheric washes and botanical implications, Skedel challenges the audience to dissolve their sense of self into the ecology we belong to.
Sit in the chair and pet the giant snake plant while you browse the art on the wall. Relax and imagine yourself melting into the air and vibrating with invisible molecules, like how the figures in the paintings melt into the background, brushed with earth tones.
- When: Now through Oct. 28, 2025
- Where: Bunker Center for the Arts, 1014 E 19th St., Kansas City, MO
“Animate Ground” at Gallery Bogart
If you love clay and pigment, “Animate Ground” at Gallery Bogart is the exhibition for you. The exhibition features Mexico City-based painter Mónica Figueroa, Kansas City-based mixed-media painter Jo Archuleta, ceramicist and illustrator Lizzie Ingram, ceramicist and printmaker SunYoung Park, and curator and mixed-media artist SK Reed.
Collectively, the sculptures, paintings and ceramics explore the versatility of clay, soil, and earth pigments, and how artists bend their medium while negotiating with the inherent properties of each material – finding a balancing point between artistic expression and material nature.
These artists treat materials as living, breathing entities with their unique characteristics and personalities. It turns this artmaking process into a co-creation between the artists, and the natural medium they use.
- When: Now through Nov. 29, 2025
- Where: Gallery Bogart, 1400 Union Ave., Kansas City, MO
“The Mother And… Project” at Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
“The Mother And… Project” is a group exhibition for artists who identify as mothers and their diverse lived experiences.
Focusing on “the ethics of mothering,” the exhibit showcases the different principles the artists use to raise their children and teach them how to engage with the world. In return, those ethics inform each artist’s creative practice.
You can see in the works that mix of fluidity, curiosity, experimentation, and resilience. For example, Kansas City-based textile artist Debbie Barrett-Jones presents “Holding On, Letting Go,” an installation where a floor loom sits amongst piles of messy fabrics, overfilled Tupperware, photo albums, random printouts, and children’s toys.
The installation featured an impromptu weaving performance by the artist on the open night, vividly recreating the chaotic state that a mother artist often finds herself in, and how she must learn to give up control of her environment while holding onto her creative core.
- When: Now through Nov. 21, 2025
- When: Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, 2012 Baltimore Ave., Kansas City, MO
“where the ground welts” by Sky Maggiore
Kansas City-based photographer and sculptor Sky Maggiore presents a solo exhibit titled “where the ground welts” at The Waiting Room this month.
The exhibition taps into the survival nature of Fresnel lenses, which are commonly used to reflect light in order to signal for help. Together, the patterns on the lenses form something similar to a target. When taking photographs using these lenses, their magnifying property abstracts what’s behind them, losing certain details while bending the audience’s focus onto the image as a whole.
This is a collaborative effort between Maggiore and the Native Lands Restoration Collaborative in Lawrence, Kansas. By documenting the native lands and their restorative acts, Maggiore draws correlations between the plea for help from our environment, and that from the trans community.
The Fresnel becomes a connection between ecology and people, signaling hope while capturing the looming distress.
- When: Now through Nov. 14, 2025
- Where: The Waiting Room, 1106 Santa Fe St., Kansas City, MO
“My Mother’s Tongue Ties Me Together” at the Spencer Museum
Indulge in the best of Kansas City’s visual arts community at “My Mother’s Tongue Ties Me Together,” an exhibition at the University of Kansas’ Spencer Museum featuring the winners of the 2025 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards: Noelle Choy, Hùng Lê, and Merry Sun.
All three artists carry with them their Asian heritage and use their creative practice to investigate the multitude of Asian diasporic identities. Drawing inspiration from their memories and personal experiences on migration, the artists employ sound, performance, textile, collage, and sculpture to materialize individual and collective memory.
For example, Sung’s installation, “In the Tempest, Through the Eaves,” utilizes dou-gong bracketing systems, a traditional Chinese architectural structure that can withstand violent storms and earthquakes. Instead of timber, Sung recreates the framework using cement, connecting modern construction material with the history of her Chinese American lineage.
Lê’s textile collage also explores individual and collective memory-making as an immigrant. In “Người Bạn Cho Một Đường Dài (A Friend for the Long Road),” Lê reconstructed a photo of their late uncle, whose burial prompted the artist to reconsider their relationship with the land and the concept of a “home.”
Then, the artist laid patterns inspired by Vietnamese brown ceramic ware via embroidery on top of the image. Overlapping heritage and personal experience, and the past and the present, Lê asks the audience to think about what remains of a home when loved ones pass, boundaries shift, and life continues.
- When: Now through Jan. 4
- Where: Spencer Museum, 1301 Mississippi St., Lawrence, KS
