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Kansas City, MO 64111

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Kemper Museum is a free art museum in Kansas City, Missouri that presents global contemporary art.

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

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Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art acknowledges it resides on the ancestral territory of the Osage, Kaw, and Otoe-Missouria, among other tribal nations forcibly moved to the region such as the Shawnee, Wyandot, Delaware, Potawatomi, Sac and Fox and Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo) nations. We recognize and support the continued vibrancy of Native communities and cultures today who continue to thrive, as well as the inherent sovereignty of tribal nations. We are compelled to serve and advocate for these communities in accordance with our public mission.

Kemper Museum acknowledges and respects the diversity of Native people connected to this land today. Many recognize the land and all beings who live within it as relatives. We acknowledge the earth we inhabit, the waters of the Blue River, the Kansas River, the Missouri River, and the plants, animals, and people supported by them. 

We acknowledge our responsibility to be good caretakers of the land we occupy. 

Click here to learn more about our land acknowledgment process.

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Lucía Vidales (b. 1986, Mexico City) engages drawing and painting media to explore and expand the lineage of traditional art historical subjects. In Hambre, her massive installation commissioned for Kemper Museum’s ninth annual Atrium Project, Vidales takes on the iconic Last Supper, a portrayal of the apostles’ reactions to Jesus announcing that one of them would betray him. Hambre both pays homage to and critiques historical imagery associated with the Last Supper, and addresses modern pictorial representations of a dinner scene, acknowledging the evolution of the genre, subject, and setting.

Vidales uses traditional painting and drawing as a window into the complex social, cultural, and historical layers of meaning within meal sharing, dinner parties, and gathering spaces, where eating and community are central elements. “The first time I lived in an international context, I noticed that Latinos and Latin Americans stayed long after meals to chat, have coffee, dessert, a drink, or a smoke at a leisurely pace,” Vidales observed. She added:

In Mexico, where I live, as in other parts of Latin America, mealtime and after-dinner conversations are culturally very important and privileged spaces for social life. The time spent cooking, preparing meals and all the activities that go into preparing a gathering are what is usually considered in the realm of female activities, and often part of unseen and unacknowledged labor. Those are also spaces for building close connections, solidarity, and enjoyment, gossip, confessions, and skill building. Lucía Vidales

In this new work for Kemper Museum’s atrium, the many layers of charcoal drawing that create the network of silhouetted figures beneath the painting honor those who make it possible for gatherings to take shape such as chefs, kitchen prep cooks, servers, and more. The painting of guests gathered around a table—while hung in front of the drawing—contains sweeping marks and washes that coalesce seamlessly with the background, emphasizing their connectedness.

For the first time in 2024, the Atrium Project is expanding to fill the entire central core of the museum. In addition to the commissioned installation, which has grown to span 22 x 25 feet, Hambre also includes preparatory drawings for the installation, providing insight into Vidales’s development of her surreal forms and adept use of color transitions. Her mural-scale painting Viendo Desde El Monte Calvario (2020) depicting a pilgrimage destination, the Christian site where Jesus was crucified, stretches her modernization of a historical subject across the space. Hambre means “hunger” in Spanish and here could refer to people’s hunger for some type of experience from a religious site. It also alludes to the artist’s hunger for contemporary depictions to broaden the scope and audiences of these religious sites, subjects, and scenes from visual culture. In this eight-panel painting, Vidales employs her unique mark making to evoke the blurred boundaries between human, animal, and spiritual place. The result is Vidales’s forming of a new mythology from past visual, folkloric, and spiritual histories.

Together, Vidales’s paintings and drawings encourage considerations of what we know of prescribed historical imagery and how that may have the potential to expand in contemporary art and life. 

Hambre is curated by Erin Dziedzic and organized by Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.

Lucía Vidales is a painter who lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico. She is currently an Art Professor at University UDEM and has been awarded three times with the Jovenes Creadores grant by the Secretaría de Cultura, Mexico. Vidales’s layered paintings engage themes of materiality, the body, and the consequences of historical and colonial imaginaries. The beings that populate her paintings suggest the potential for confrontation, but seldom follow through. Instead they play with humor or anxiety, or seek consolation from ancient wounds.

2014 M.F.A., National Autonomous University of Mexico, Faculty of Art and Design, Mexico City

2009 La Esmeralda National School of Painting, Sculpture, and Printmaking of the National Institute of Fine Arts, Mexico City

2021 Sudor Frío, PROXYCO, New York, New York

2021 Manoteta, PEANA, Monterrey, Mexico (20; 

2020 To cool the blue, Taka Ishii Gallery Ph / F, Tokyo

2019 Noche durante el día, Sala Gam, Galería de Arte Mexicano, Mexico City

2019 Come as you are, House of Deslave, Tijuana

2018 Cuerpo de esta sombra, Galería Alterna, Mexico City

2020–21 Four Women Painters at the Crossroads, Sapar Contemporary (at Piero Atchugarry Gallery), Miami 

2020 Murales para un cubo blanco, Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico City

2020 Daichi Takagi, Lucia Vidales, Hiroka Yamashita, Taka Ishii, Tokyo

2019 City Prince/sses, Palais de Tokyo, Paris

An Artist Grappling With Mexico’s Cultural Legacy

Slow Bodies, Racing Hearts: Lucía Vidales’s Paintings of Our Changing Selves

The Atrium Project is an annual series of commissioned projects that presents the work of emerging and mid-career Hispanic and Latinx artists. Featured artists included José Lerma (2016), Firelei Báez (2017), Paul Henry Ramirez (2018), Angel Otero (2019), Joiri Minaya (2020), Aliza Nisenbaum (2021), Pepe Mar (2022), and Sarah Zapata (2023). These site-responsive projects involve artists visits to Kansas City, inspiration from which is often incorporated into the projects. This exhibition is organized by Erin Dziedzic, director of curatorial affairs, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.

Exhibitions are always free thanks to the generosity of members and other donors. Join or donate today to support free access to contemporary art.

Lucía Vidales: Hambre

Installation view, Lucía Vidales: Hambre, September 20, 2024 - September 7, 2025, Atrium, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Photo: E. G. Schempf, 2024.

Stan Douglas (Canadian, born 1960), Luanda-Kinshasa, 2013, single-channel video projection, 6 hours 1 min (loop), color, sound, overall dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner. © Stan Douglas. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner. 

Stan Douglas: Metronome

Stan Douglas (b. 1960) is a Canadian artist whose work investigates the intersection of technology, image-making, and collective memory through the mediums of film and photography. For Stan Douglas: Metronome at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, three major video works are showcased, each focused on the theme of music. As an audiophile and former DJ, Douglas uses music as a metaphor for social and political conditions and a means for global cultural exchange. By intertwining historical moments with the present, his work highlights themes of memory, social unity, conflict, and the complexities of cultural interaction.

The featured works in Stan Douglas: Metronome include ISDN (2022), which connects rappers from the UK and Egypt through the now-obsolete ISDN technology, exploring social struggles and aspirations. Luanda-Kinshasa (2013) imagines a historic jam session at Columbia’s 30th Street Studio, creating a utopian musical space where different nationalities come together. Douglas’s early work, Hors-champs (1992), features Black expatriate musicians improvising a "free jazz" session, while his photographic series Disco Angola (2012) and 2011 ≠ 1848 (2022) delve deeper into themes of collective memory and cultural transference. Through these pieces, Douglas blends narratives and geographies, challenging binary thinking and reimagining both history and the present.

Stan Douglas: Metronome is organized by the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and curated by Kevin Moore. It is supported by a major publication, Stan Douglas: Ghostlight, published by Dancing Foxes Press in collaboration with the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College, Hessel Museum of Art. The book includes essays by CCS graduate program director and chief curator Lauren Cornell, Kevin Moore, and other prominent scholars.

Featured Works

This playlist, inspired by Stan Douglas: Metronome, was created by Kara Smith, Education Programs Manager at the American Jazz Museum.

On view at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons considers how landscapes are shaped by history, relationships, and power.

Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons

Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe/European descent, b. 1979; based in northern Minnesota and Chicago, IL) considers how landscapes are shaped by history, relationships, and power. Her artworks imagine places that are “everywhere and nowhere,” visualizing these shifting yet ever-present dynamics. Grounded in Anishinaabe understandings of space and time, the works in this exhibition reflect on how land carries memories of colonial expansion and violence, as well as Indigenous presence and resistance.

Across painting, video, and sculpture, Carlson organizes imagined landscapes around one constant—the horizon. This line is reminiscent of her homelands on Lake Superior. It is also a significant art historical trope that artists have employed to depict territories as vast and vacant, ripe for the taking. Carlson’s prismatic works are not empty: they are densely layered with an abundance of motifs, making reference to the tactics of colonialism as well as her family and peers, Ojibwe culture, and Indigenous sovereignty. Confronting ongoing histories of erasure and dispossession, Carlson proposes that what appears to be lost can be remade, reimagined, or otherwise regained.

Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons is curated by Iris Colburn, Curatorial Associate at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The Kansas City presentation is organized by Jessica S. Hong, Chief Curator, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. 

A Preview of Kansas City’s 2025-2026 Arts Season

In addition to her visual work, Andrea Carlson has published numerous essays, statements, 
and interviews about the histories and themes that inform her practice. Kemper Museum has curated a selection of these writings as supplementary reading materials for the exhibition.

Further Reading Resources:
Andrea Carlson

Generous contributions of all sizes help keep the Museum FREE for all visitors.

At Kemper Museum there is no charge for admission, parking, special exhibitions, or programs. Your donation underwrites these expenses and inspires many thousands with contemporary art each year.

Installation view, Chicago Works | Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons, MCA Chicago. August 03, 2024 – February 02, 2025. Photo: Robert Chase Heishman.

Free contemporary art museum in Kansas City, Missouri

Kemper Museum is a leading presenter of contemporary art and ideas in Kansas City, Missouri. 

Welcome to Kemper Museum

Join us for an evening of creativity and community at the museum.

Join us for an evening of creativity and community at the museum. This month's program features live music from Daniel Gum.

Open Drawing featuring Daniel Gum

Discover connections between artist Andrea Carlson’s time-based work and local Indigenous land stewardship, wetlands rematriation, preservation, and challenges posed by carbon banking.

Regional Spotlight: Indigenous Stewardship of the Haskell Wetlands 

Join us for a drop-in tour led by a Kemper Museum docent on the second Saturday of the month at 1 PM.  Docent guides will spark curiosity and conversation about select artworks and exhibitions. Gather at the Visitor Services desk in the Atrium at 1 PM to participate. No registration required.

Gallery Conversations with a Museum Docent

Sing songs, read books, explore art, and make your own art with a Kemper Museum educator and Kansas City librarian.

Totally Tots

Totally Tots featuring "Stories in Spotlight"

In conjunction with the Kansas City Art Institute’s Current Perspectives artist talk, join us at Kemper Museum for a film screening of the award-winning documentary COLOR by interdisciplinary artist Alteronce Gumby

Alteronce Gumby: COLOR Film Screening

Join Chief Curator Jessica S. Hong for a casual gallery talk focused on Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons, and stay for lunch at the museum's new restaurant, Oil on Linen.

Curator's Gallery Spotlight

We are honored to host an exciting evening with Kansas City-area filmmaker and Oscar winning co-writer for BlacKkKlansman, Kevin Willmott! 

Reimagining History with Academy-Award Winning Filmmaker Kevin Willmott 

As a part of the UMKC Shutz Lecture Series, Kemper Museum and UMKC’s Department of English and Media, Art and Design are excited to invite scholar Gloria Sutton to present her ongoing project, Pattern Recognition: Contemporary Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.  

Marilyn T. and Byron C. Shutz Lecture Series: Gloria Sutton 

Dálida and Michael (Serennata del Tres Cubano)

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Carry III

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Carbon, silver and gold

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Helen Frankenthaler and Alexander Liberman in her East 83rd Street studio, New York - 1967, with GUIDING RED

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Textile Installations

In Praise of Prairie Dogs

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The Wedding

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Untitled Escape Collage

Mixed Media

Keep admission, parking, special exhibitions, and programming free for everyone.

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Head to Kemper Museum each month for an evening of community and creativity!

This month featuring live music by Daniel Gum of Manor Records.

Pick up a stool, drawing board, and provided drawing materials, or bring your own sketchbook and find a spot for open drawing at the museum. New this year, select Open Drawing nights will feature live music organized by Manor Records.

All levels of experience are welcome. Cash bar. (Kemper Museum members receive two free drinks.)

Attendees are allowed to bring their own sketchbooks, paper, and pencil. Otherwise, please use the materials provided by the museum.

Please use only graphite pencils, colored pencils, and crayons in all areas of the museum.

Markers, ink pens, charcoal, paint, watercolor, etc. are NOT allowed (nothing that is liquid-based or highly friable) in any areas of the museum.

Larger drawing boards can be used in the Atrium, but please use standard or smaller size clipboards if you enter one of the galleries.

Folding stools can be taken into the galleries. No easels, tables or drawing horses in the galleries.

Set up a minimum of 6 feet from artwork in the entire museum, and please do not blow or swipe graphite dust or eraser debris toward artworks.

Please dispose of any pencil shavings or any other debris in trash cans provided.

Click here for information on how to get to the museum and where to find our free parking lots.

Kemper Museum programs are FREE thanks to support from members and other donors. Join today!

Public Programs are free, thanks to Kemper Museum members and other donors. 

Kemper Museum is delighted to host a presentation led by Chief Curator Jessica S. Hong and Courtney King (Peoria), Greenhouse Manager at Haskell Indian Nations University. Discover connections between artist Andrea Carlson’s time-based work and local Indigenous land stewardship, wetlands rematriation, preservation, and challenges posed by carbon banking. Following the talk, explore the exhibition Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons.  

Registration is required; seating is limited. 

K﻿emper Museum programs are free thanks to support from members and other donors. Join today!

Art Credit: Andrea Carlson and Rozalinda Borcilă (b. 1979, Grand Portage Ojibwe/European descent), Hydrologic Unit Code 071200 - Nibi Ezhi-Nisidawaabanjigaade Ozhibii’igeowin 071200, 2022, five-channel video installation (color, sound) and printed matter, Courtesy of the artists © Andrea Carlson. Image courtesy of MCA Chicago.

Join us for a drop-in tour led by a Kemper Museum docent on the second Saturday of the month at 1 PM. No registration required. Docent guides will spark curiosity and conversation about select artworks and exhibitions. Gather at the Visitor Services desk in the Atrium at 1 PM to participate.

Public programs are free for everyone only because they are supported by many. 

Join us for a special Totally Tots featuring Stories in the Spotlight where reading comes to life through the arts in KC! 

Sing songs, read books, explore and make your own art with a Kemper Museum educator and Kansas City librarian. At this session, take a closer look at artwork in Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons, enjoy a tailored reading list provided by Turn the Page KC, and take home a free book and additional literacy activities! 

Turn the Page KC’s mission is to mobilize communities to ensure children gain the literacy skills needed to create a lifetime of opportunities. Stories in the Spotlight aims to foster growing readers through the Arts in Kansas City. 

Public programs are always FREE for everyone only because they are supported by many.

In conjunction with the Kansas City Art Institute’s Current Perspectives artist talk, join us at Kemper Museum for a film screening of the award-winning documentary COLOR by interdisciplinary artist Alteronce Gumby; an audience Q&A with Gumby will follow.

COLOR investigates the cultural and material spectrum of color across the globe. Gumby’s practice spans painting, installation, and film, and his work is held in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the National Gallery of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum. This event is free and open to the public.

Registration is required; seating is limited.