Linda Lighton’s five decade career in contemporary art almost didn’t happen.
Lighton wanted to become an artist right after high school, in the mid-1960s, but her hopes were nearly crushed in a meeting with the then-president of the Kansas City Art Institute.
“I took my little portfolio down there and he said, ‘Honey, aren't you going to get married? Don't you have a boyfriend?’” Lighton remembers. “And he goes, ‘You're never going to do art.’”
Lighton’s family owned the luxury department store Woolf Brothers, and her prominent father wanted her to become a socialite and housewife. Lighton wasn’t interested.
“I know my father was a donor (to KCAI), and he probably put him up to it,” she says.
So she ran off, got married, and escaped — briefly — to Lawrence, Kansas. Until, according to Lighton, her father showed up on her doorstep with then-Kansas City Police Chief and future FBI director Clarence Kelley.
“My father came and they kidnaped me, pretty much, and institutionalized me,” Lighton says. “Nobody knew where I was, and I didn't know where I was.”
Lighton was detained in a private mental institution, unable to make phone calls or see visitors. She remembers being terrified.
“I ended up having to go to court five times to prove my sanity,” she says with a rueful laugh. The experience only made her more determined to pursue her passion.
“They finally let me go,” she says, “and we pretty much hitchhiked to California.”
On the West Coast, Lighton studied art and discovered a love for working in clay.
Her early work deals with gender roles and draws inspiration from popular culture.
“Everything I looked at in the ‘80s seemed to look like a penis to me,” Lighton laughs. “And I’m like, what are these men doing — it’s all men designers, isn’t it?”
Her ceramic subjects include ordinary objects with a playful appeal, like colorful shirts, lipstick, and aprons.
“I was doing all these clothes where you can kind of identify, what does a wifebeater look like, a jean jacket, jean pants, a tuxedo shirt, a suit and tie,” Lighton says.
The sculptures also riffed on her family’s history in the fashion industry.
‘She doesn't shy away from touchy subjects’
Lighton’s work has been the subject of more than 60 solo shows, and she’s participated in hundreds of group shows on three continents.
The 77-year-old’s work can be found in Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Ariana Museum in Switzerland, a gallery that contains twelve centuries of ceramic art.
The current retrospective at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art traces her career’s entire evolution.
“She doesn't shy away from touchy subjects and I think that is what makes her a contemporary artist rather than a ceramic artist,” says the Nerman’s Executive Director JoAnne Northrup.
“She is dealing with the things that she sees and observes in our culture, and commenting on them with acerbic wit,” Northrtup says, “and I think that that's really important.”
For much of the last decade, Lighton’s work has taken aim at gun violence, and many of her pieces are cast from semiautomatic weapons. There’s a ceramic wreath made of pistols, vibrant flowers that bristle with bullets, and a bandolier loaded with tubes of lipstick.
“We're still the fifth most dangerous city in the country, with about four murders a week,” Lighton says, “and it's much worse since we've had concealed carry.”
The ceramic guns have sold poorly over the last 10 years, she admits, “but it seems really important.”
Lighton’s sculptures often elicit strong reactions, and at times she’s encountered censorship.
Several of Lighton's sculptures were removed from the Kansas City area’s 2015 contribution to the national “Women To Watch” exhibit, at The Epsten Gallery in Overland Park.
The gallery is located in the Village Shalom retirement home, where deadly shootings took place in April 2014. Village Shalom administrators asked to remove Lighton's gun-themed sculptures, fearing they might be too disturbing for some residents.
Lighton’s 2023 work “Supreme Justice” also struck a raw nerve. The work depicts a glossy robe with a white, lacy collar resembling those of former Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Outside the robes, a pistol emerges from a bright pink uterus.
Lighton posted a photo of the sculpture on Facebook, after the Dobbs decision struck down Roe v. Wade and overturned the right to abortion.
“I got axed in 20 seconds all the way off of Facebook,” Lighton says.
Her account was eventually restored, but she says the memory still fills her with anger.
“I feel that an artist needs to say what’s going on in the world, and then give you the opportunity to think about it,” Lighton says, while adding the final touches to a small bird-shaped teapot in her studio.
Her second-floor workspace, at 31st and Holmes streets, is surrounded by decades of carefully curated sculptures, each one making a statement.
“Hopefully, that’s what my work is about: Let’s have a conversation,” she says.
“Linda Lighton: Love & War” runs through May 3, 2026, at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, 12345 College Blvd., Overland Park, Kansas 66210. For more information, go to NermanMuseum.org.
