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

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Hung Liu

The World in Kansas City

New Acquisitions: In Celebration of Thirty Years of Kemper Museum

Seven Poses: A Gift Fit For A Queen

Contemporary Art and the Missouri Bicentennial

This/That: Kemper Teen Arts Council Curated Exhibition

Water Music

Summoning Ghosts: The Art of Hung Liu

Bebe and Crosby Kemper Collection

Grand Canal

Interregnum

Mu Nu (Mother and Daughter)

A Third Eye

This series consists of seven pigment prints made from Hung Liu’s paintings featuring portraits of late Qing-dynasty Chinese courtesans, or elite sex workers. Liu based these portraits on black-and-white photographs and surrounded them with motifs drawn from traditional Chinese art and her signature painterly marks: vertical drips, translucent layers of color, and gestural circles. Each print also features a collaged image of a customary gift object, referencing these women’s commodification. Liu’s lifelong engagement with photography began with her childhood under the Maoist regime, which rejected class hierarchy. As a result, her wealthy family was forced to destroy nearly all family photographs to avoid persecution, shaping Liu’s view of the medium as a way to recover obscured histories. She describes her artistic process as one that both “preserves and destroys the image,” reinterpreting old photographs to give visibility to women neglected by history.

MA Student in Art History, University of Kansas

Untitled

To Create Mankind's Happiness

Passage

Hung LiuAmerican, born China, 1948–2021