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4420 Warwick Boulevard
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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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. 

Artist Talk | Andrea Carlson

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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.

Naudline Pierre, Soft and Fragile, 2018, Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches, Promised gift of Bill and Christy Gautreaux, Kansas City, Missouri, PG.2019.09.02. © Naudline Pierre, courtesy of the artist and Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles Photo: E. G. Schempf, 2020

In a bold reimagining of her Atrium commission, Lucía Vidales will transform her Atrium commission to enter into dialogue with selected works in the Kemper’s collection.

Figure it Out: Lucía Vidales Selects

Figure it Out- Lucía Vidales Selects.pdf

In a bold reimagining of her Atrium commission, Lucía Vidales will transform her Atrium commission to enter into dialogue with selected works in the Kemper’s collection. As part of our ongoing commitment to fostering deeper connections with the artists we collaborate with and to engage with the collection, the museum’s foundation. She will remove the central painting, leaving only the black-and-white piece directly applied to the wall. In addition to the wall adjacent to Oil on Linen, this will create a thoughtful space for her to showcase works from the Kemper’s collection that align with the core themes of her project. 

Vidales’ exploration of the expanded figure, along with migration and class will serve as a lens through which these pieces are reinterpreted, encouraging fresh conversations and layered understandings. This curatorial intervention invites viewers to see the collection anew, as living material in dialogue with contemporary voices.

Figure It Out: Lucía Vidales' Selects

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

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Stan Douglas: Metronome

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"

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 

Join us at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art as we celebrate two landmark exhibitions opening for the Fall.

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Dálida and Michael (Serennata del Tres Cubano)

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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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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. 

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

Drawing on computational regimes of visuality including tracking and surveillance, Pattern Recognition pushes beyond screen-based modalities of spectatorship which have dominated current thinking about digital media within art history, film, and media studies. This talk traces the stealthy intrusion of artificial intelligence in everyday imaging apps that make distinctions between human and computer vision more difficult to discern at a time when representation is now being reconfigured as “datafication.” Aimed at a broad humanities audience, Pattern Recognition connects digitally-born artworks and the mass digitalization of analog artworks to Art History’s own unresolvable conflict with experiencing works of art simultaneously in real life and through reproductive image surrogates including prints, drawings, photographs, models and slides which have made art history dependent on the virtualizing force of pictorial representation from the very inception of the discipline.  

Registration required; limited seating available 

Gloria Sutton is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History at Northeastern University. Her scholarship has been supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Getty Research Institute. She has been a scholar-in-residence at Harvard University’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts; held curatorial positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; served as the inaugural editor of the College Art Association’s Art Journal Open; and was a founding board member of Rhizome.org. She is currently completing Pattern Recognition: Contemporary Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, which argues for a “latent space of art history” — mapping how computational models and machine learning reframe the production, reception, and historiography of contemporary art.

Image: Julia Scher, Delta Alexa, 2018 Alexa virtual assistants, green gel filter, MP3 players, cables Dimensions variable Photo © Simon Vogel

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

Join us at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art as we celebrate two landmark exhibitions opening for the Fall: Raven Halfmoon: Ride or Die and The Atrium Project: 10 Years, 10 Stories. The public reception will take place at the Kemper Museum, followed by a talk by Halfmoon at the Kansas City Art Institute. This is a special opportunity to hear directly from the artist, explore the ideas driving her work, and gain deeper insight into the themes that shape her creative vision.

5:00 – 7:00 p.m. Opening Reception at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

Cash Bar Opens 5:00 p.m. | Reception 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.
RSVP encouraged: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fall-exhibitions-opening-celebration-tickets-1758299534239?aff=oddtdtcreator

7:00 p.m. Jedel Visiting Artist “Current Perspectives” Lecture with Raven Halfmoon at Kansas City Art Institute

Open to the public
Location: Epperson Auditorium
Kansas City Art Institute
4415 Warwick Blvd
Kansas City, MO 64111
RSVP here: https://events.humanitix.com/current-perspectives-raven-halfmoon/tickets

Image Credits: (Left) Tushka Manahatta (2025). Stoneware glaze. 36 ½ x 26 x 17 ½ inches. Images courtesy of the artist and Salon 94. © Raven Halfmoon. Photography by Kes Efstathiou.(Right) Installation view, Pepe Mar: Rising Sun, August 19, 2022 - July 30, 2023, Atrium, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Photo: E. G. Schempf, 2022

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