As Kansas City enjoys some spring showers (and a random snowstorm) and hopes for blooming flowers, now is a great time to spend time with art that’s designed to connect us with our fellow humans.
Here are six exhibitions you should explore around the Kansas City metro, spanning Indigenous artists from the Midwest and aspiring students ready to embrace a wider world.
“Perseverance: Shifting Tides” at Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
Members of the Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) Asian American Pacific Islander Association present “Perseverance: Shifting Tides” at Leedy-Voulkos Art Center this month, exploring the nuances and complexities of Asian American identities.
The exhibition features student artists Sophia Gaeun Lee, Lucas Nguyen, Kaitlin Welch, Thomas Singhirunnusorn, Yash Singh, Cillian Sager, Cindy Chanhsavang, Chloe Beattie, and Leon Cay. These artists showcase a wide array of work spanning fabric, photography, ceramics, sculpture, painting, and printmaking.
For example, Sophia Lee shows an interactive painting/sculpture that spins, depicting the interchangeability of her Asian and American identities. Kaitlin Welch presents a set of nine block prints titled “Fish Out of Water” (shown in the photo above) and explores queer Asian identity.
- When: Now through March 20, 2026, closing reception on Saturday, March 21
- Where: Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, 2012 Baltimore Ave., Kansas City, Missouri
”Queer Ecologies II” at Charlotte Street Foundation
Kansas City-based artists and curators SK Reed and Lily Erb team up with Wisconsin-based Bianca Brandolino and Chicago-based Maven Kennedy to present a new edition of “Queer Ecologies,” a group exhibition highlighting diverse queer artists from the Midwest whose practices investigate queerness in ecology.
This exhibition is a collaboration between Kansas City’s The Waiting Room Gallery and Chicago’s Purple Window Gallery.
“Queer Ecologies II” features 20 artists with works using nontraditional materials and formats, including bioplastic, zines, ceramics, recycled waste, natural pigments, and traditional media such as photography, fiber, and glass. As queerness is often seen as the “glitch space” between existing binaries, these artists dive into the intersection to find deeper connections between human bodies and the ecosystem.
For example, “The Rabbit Always Dies” by Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist Oona Taper is an experimental nonfiction project revealing facts and histories about pregnancy tests from the 1930s to the ‘60s, which relied heavily on live frogs and rabbits. The project consists of an 80-page risograph-printed artist book and a short documentary film.
- When: March 21 through May 2, 2026
- Where: Charlotte Street Foundation, 3333 Wyoming St., Kansas City, Missouri
M. Willie Garcia and Rachelle Gardner-Roe at Bunker Center
It’s always interesting to see how different artists interact simply by being in the same space. This month, Bunker Center for the Arts presents two significantly different solo exhibitions by Kansas City printmaker M. Willie Garcia and painter Rachelle Gardner-Roe, each occupying one of the center’s gallery spaces.
In “Beyond the Void,” Garcia draws inspiration from quantum mechanics, cosmology, and astrophysics. The space is transformed into a temporal universe, with ink paintings mimicking the dark side of the moon and illustrations capturing surreal interaction between the tides and celestial entities.
Stepping away from Garcia’s black-and-white world, the viewer enters Gardner-Roe’s “Get Wild,” which boasts colors from nature. Blue, pink, orange, and red, decorated by lush indigo or gold tassels, create a playful invitation to party and frolic in the wilderness.
- When: Now through March 29, 2026
- Where: Bunker Center for the Arts, 1014 E 19th St., Kansas City, Missouri
“Unfolding: a Kansas City Kansas Community College Student Exhibition” at Roeland Park City Hall
Students at the Kansas City Kansas Community College (KCKCC) are taking over Roeland Park City Hall this March to celebrate their boundless creativity.
“Unfolding” highlights 21 students practicing in different disciplines, including paintings, drawings, photographs, and various sculptures, many of which represent a student’s rapidly evolving individuality.
For example, Alli Stoddard, a sophomore art major at KCKCC, sculpted an elephant head with cardboard. Stepping away from traditional sculpting media and embracing accessible, everyday materials, Stoddard demonstrates her craftsmanship in innovative, unexpected ways.
Meanwhile, Dylan McKee, a sophomore in studio arts, presents a sculpture focusing on the process of artmaking itself. The wire sculpts an eye and a pair of lips, wrapped around a dowel attached to a canvas. Another wire traces the outline of someone’s profile. The piece captures a portrait in progress, visualizing the state before something transitions from the artist’s observing eye to the canvas.
- When: Now through April 17, 2026
- Where: Roeland Park City Hall, 4600 W 51st St. #200, Roeland Park, Kansas
“Voices Now: Contemporary Native American Art” at The Museum of Kansas City
The Museum of Kansas City is hosting “Voices Now: Contemporary Native American Art” as the art companion to a new exhibit exploring Osage history in Missouri. Both are tied to the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup in Kansas City, as well as the nation’s 250th anniversary.
“Voices Now” features 15 Indigenous artists with various tribal affiliations and a wide range of practices. These artists often explore themes including land-human relationship, Indigenous people’s rights, Indigenous culture, colonialism and resistance, and identity and belonging.
For example, Minnesota-based painter Julie Buffalohead (enrolled Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma) uses animal characters from mythology to retell contemporary happenings, giving agency and personhood to fantastical beings.
Kansas-based oil painter Norman Akers (Osage, partial work shown above) focuses on places and nature, and frequently addresses critical issues such as the environmental crisis in his work.
- When: March 21 through Feb. 21, 2027
- Where: The Museum of Kansas City, 3218 Gladstone Blvd., Kansas City, Missouri
“Convos Around the Dinner Table” at Vulpes Bastille
The annual student exhibition is one of the largest projects at Vulpes Bastille in the Crossroads. Titled “Convos Around the Dinner Table,” this year’s collection is again curated by Kansas City-based painter and curator Tanith K, owner of Gallery Athanor.
“Convos Around the Dinner Table” features traditional undergraduate students and those going back to school at a later age. This effort is to improve inclusivity for “nontraditional students” who often feel left out or are unsure about their eligibility to participate in “undergraduate” projects.
Artists in this exhibition work in photography, ceramics, installations, printmaking, paintings, fiber, and mixed media. Together, they highlight the creative practices within the Greater Kansas City’s university and college arts community, but the pieces also converse between each other.
One UMKC student explores their loss of home due to immigration, and follows with an investigation of prevalent nostalgia, which was also the theme of works by a student from the Kansas City Art Institute who drew inspiration from their childhood home.
- When: April 3 through April 24, 2026, opening on April 3 at 5 p.m.
- Where: Vulpes Bastille, 1737 Locust St., Kansas City, Missouri
