Kansas City’s winter has been relatively mild so far, giving the perfect excuse to get out of the warmth of our home and check out some wonderful exhibitions featuring local and regional artists.
After all, what better way to start your 2026 than immersing yourself in the wonderful talent of our arts scene?
Before winter ends, check out these seven art exhibitions around Kansas City.
“Speeding” at 100,000,000 Space
“Speeding” is the latest group exhibition at one of Kansas City’s independent artist-run spaces, 100,000,000 (“one hundred million”). The exhibition features new sculptures and paintings by Kansas City-based multi-disciplinary artist Annie Woodfill, Massachusetts-based installation artist Charlie Crowell, Mexico City-based sculptor Mario Cuellar Ocaña, and Kansas City-based painter Shaza Umran.
Together, the artists capture an urgent sense of necessity of moving forward regardless of constraints — a fitting analogy for the current political and cultural landscape in America.
For example, Umran’s pegboard paintings suggest motion and interaction. In one piece, two self-portraits sit front-and-back, making the smaller, orange-haired face look like it had just pushed its way to the front.
In another, white threads mimic the form of a fire ladder as blue birds fly behind it. Underneath, a smaller pegboard holds loose strings that look like branches in the wind, and a third board on the bottom has a pale shell on a dark background — or was it the vertebrae? The pegboards are connected via beaded strings and wires, suggesting an interconnectivity.
Crowell’s installation is a more direct reflection of the exhibition’s title. Gazing through the angled stained glass panes makes everything appear in blurry colors, like what one would see through the windows of a speeding vehicle. You can squint your eyes and try to discern shapes from forms, but all will escape you, and only the colorful ambiguity remains.
- When: Now through Jan. 17, 2026
- Where: 100,000,000 Space, off the alley between 222 and 332 W. 75th St. Kansas City, MO 64114
“One Bedroom Apartment: The Second Installment” at Gallery Bogart
If you missed the first edition of “One Bedroom Apartment” earlier this year, you wouldn’t want to miss out on this second installment. On view at Gallery Bogart in the West Bottoms through the end of January, this exhibition features bite-sized artworks that fit into a regular apartment, encouraging the general public to engage with the act of art collecting.
The second installment showcases a new roster of emerging and early-career artists alongside some returning crowd favorites, including Guadalajara-based sculptor Napoleón Aguilera, Mexico City-based painter Monica Figueroa, and Kansas City-based painter Madeline Brice, to name just a few.
Intimacy and accessibility are key to this collection of small works. For example, while Figureroa is known for her large-scale acrylic paintings, the artist showed a series of smaller drawings on paper that appear to be the study of one of her paintings. The drawings provide a glance into the artist’s process from greyscale shading to color mapping, to colored and shaded underpainting.
- When: Now through Jan. 31, 2026
- Where: Gallery Bogart, 1400 Union Ave, Kansas City, MO 64101
“What Work Is” at Vulpes Bastille
Curated by Kansas City-based Adams Puryear and Nina Littrell, “What Work Is” at Vulpes Bastille in the East Bottoms features over 40 Kansas City-based artists, makers, and crafters to explore the complex relationship between art and labor.
Each artist is asked to transform a pair of factory coveralls, the symbol of industrial labor and “the American Dream.” By doing so, the artists redefine what it means to be successful and accomplished, and ultimately rewrite the American ideology of a perfect life.
For example, artist duo Haley Wooten and Sabrina Strausbaugh (shown above) used textiles and paint to explore the theme of sisterhood. In their piece, the pair drew inspiration from American folk art to re-interpret the lyrics of the patriotic song, “America the Beautiful.” Here, America is transformed into an all-encompassing being, tender yet formidable, gentle yet determined. By doing so, the artists measure a nation’s success through a matriarchal lens, focusing on how well it cares for its land and people.
- When: Now through Jan. 24, 2026
- Where: Vulpes Bastille, 1737 Locust St, Kansas City, MO 64108
“Fabric is Memory: Stories of Self” at Carter Art Center
The Carter Art Center at Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley presents a new fiber art exhibition this coming February that is full of vibrance and wonder.
“Fabric is Memory: Stories of Self” features fiber and textile work from Kansas City, Kansas-based Ashlynn Bonds and Nedra Bonds, Chicago-based Krista Cibis, Ames, Iowa-based Catherine Reinhart, Cape Girardeau-based Hannah March Sanders, and Kansas City, Missouri-based artists Lily Erb, Nathan Ford, Cherline Philogene, and Becky Stevens.
These artists use fabric to tell personal stories and manifest cultural memory. In one piece, Sanders presents a large-scale tapestry where colorful fabrics are crocheted into fluid shapes. A rainbow-hued wheel sits in the center, radiating outward into a warm-tone spiral on the left consisting of orange, brown, and yellow colors, and a cold-tone one on the right with shades of blue, indigo, and green. Images of the artist’s children are printed onto two separate fabric pieces and embedded into the tapestry, threading generations together in one piece of art.
- When: Feb. 5 through March 6, 2026
- Where: Metropolitan Community College - Penn Valley, Carter Art Center, 3201 Southwest Trafficway, Kansas City, MO 64111
“Modern Nature” by Breanna Johnson at 3West KC
3West KC in the West Bottoms is starting its 2026 season with a solo exhibition featuring Lawrence-based abstract painter Breanna Johnson. Titled “Modern Nature,” the exhibition showcases Johnson’s large-format paintings, drawing inspiration from modern living and the natural world.
These paintings are vibrant, colorful, and complex in composition. Johnson layers abstract references to house plants, tree crowns, sun-cast shadows, and other motifs, juxtaposing color and greyscale. Through painting, the artist materializes the modern life where the artificial and industrial intersects with the natural, emphasizing an experience that is messy, confusing, yet beautiful all the same.
- When: Jan. 23 through Feb. 28, 2026. Opening on January 23 from 6–9 p.m.
- Where: 3West KC, 1106 Santa Fe St 3rd Floor, Kansas City, MO 64101
“Personal Best” at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
“Personal Best” at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is a unique look into creativity by focusing on six Kansas City-based artist-athletes and their practices. Scheduled to run through the 2026 World Cup, the exhibition examines how the exhibiting artists must stay “on top of their game” in the creative and athletic worlds, and how their dual identities influence one another in their formation through diligent practice and pursuit of excellence.
For example, multidisciplinary artist and mixed martial arts fighter Thea Wolfe uses her art to pay tribute to the brutal yet powerful world of MMA through a tedious system of cutting, weaving, and pasting.
At a distance, the portraits are composed of rows of 1"x1” paper grids. However, a closer observation reveals that each grid contains smaller paper fragments glued together. The labor-intensive process sheds light on the invisible effort behind each fighter’s rise and fall and serves as a tribute to the player’s dedication to their art.
- When: Now through Aug. 9, 2026
- Where: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak St, Kansas City, MO 64111
“Ride or Die” by Raven Halfmoon at the Kemper Museum
As we head into the Year of the Horse on the lunar calendar, Raven Halfmoon’s solo exhibition at The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art seems to fit the theme perfectly. Centered around a large-scale sculpture of a bucking horse, “Ride or Die” marks the breakthrough of the Oklahoma-born, Caddo Nation artist.
The stoneware sculpture is a direct response to the Cyrus Dallin sculpture “The Scout” in Kansas City’s Penn Valley Park, which continues the stereotypical depiction of Native people by depicted a Sioux rider on horseback. Halfmoon created a horse of relentless resistance to honor the resilience and sovereignty of Indigenous tribes. Surrounding this central theme, other pieces in the exhibition also focus on the accurate portrayal of Indigenous people and their beliefs.
- When: Now through April. 19, 2026
- Where: Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 4420 Warwick Boulevard, Kansas City, MO 64111
