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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. 

Click here to learn more about our land acknowledgment process.

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For its participation in Open Spaces: A Kansas City Arts Experience, Kemper Museum presents a combination of new and older works by New York-based artist Kathy Butterly. Since the early 1990s, Butterly (b. 1963) has created distinctly evocative sculptures that contribute to and expand upon the tradition of studio ceramics. Through her practice, Butterly engages with concepts ranging from scale, materiality, and line to the history of the handmade vessel. She uses traditional ceramic forms as her starting point, referring to these formal templates as her “canvas.” Contorting and misshaping these structures through painstaking, delicate construction, she then adds layer upon layer of glaze, and fires the works repeatedly, causing some glazes to recede and others to burst into view. By way of their intimate scale, Butterly’s sculptures invite the viewer to move in and take a closer look, awakening our latent curiosity about the labor-intensive process required to produce such intricate creations.

This is Butterly’s first one-person solo museum exhibition in the Midwest, and was co-organized by Erin Dziedzic and Dan Cameron, in generous collaboration with James Cohan Gallery, New York, and Byron C. Cohen Gallery, Kansas City.

Kathy Butterly

Kathy Butterly, (American, born 1963)
 Heavy Head, 2003
 clay and glaze, 3⅜ x 6 x 3 inches