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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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Ralston Crawford

Ralston Crawford was associated with the Precisionist movement of the 1930s, which depicted and celebrated American infrastructure. In the late 1960s, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation commissioned Crawford to depict the Grand Coulee Dam. Using his photographs of the site as a reference, he painted this distilled, abstracted image of overlapping turbine shafts. Crawford’s background, which ranged from working aboard steamships to documenting nuclear weapons tests, afforded him a firsthand understanding of manufactured power. After WWII, his work increasingly engaged with the industry’s destructive force and revealed a more ambivalent attitude than his earlier works. Considering the Grand Coulee Dam’s destruction of native salmon runs and spawning grounds, which in turn impacted Indigenous communities, can the cold, looming, and seemingly impenetrable shapes comprising Turbine Shafts, Coulee Dam #2, be read as a critique of industrial progress?

Alessia Serra
MA Student in Art History, University of Kansas
Fall 2025

Bebe and Crosby Kemper Collection

Turbine Shafts, Coulee Dam #2

Turbine Shafts, Coulee Dam #2, 1971Ralston Crawford