Karl Janssen - Kansas City

Kansas City

I currently live in the suburbs of Kansas City. I just moved here from nearby Lawrence, Kansas. My fiancee recently compiled a long list of tourist attractions in KC for our wedding guests, so I am going to reproduce that below (click here to read about KC tourist attractions). I myself am going to write a bit about the art scene in Kansas City.

At one time, from the early 20th century to about the 1950s, Kansas City was a real art hub for the midwestern U.S. This was a big center for jazz music, and all the greats of that art form played here at one time or another. The Kansas City Art Institute was a world-class school, and hosted some famous alumni like Robert Rauschenberg and Walt Disney. In the 1940s, one of the most famous artists in America was Thomas Hart Benton, who made his home here in KC, and wanted to make this city into the cultural nexus of America. Well, that didn't really happen, and KC is not quite the creative hub that it was 60 or 70 years ago. That said, there is a lively art scene here today, and it is steadily growing in notoriety and influence.

Personally, I think the problem with KC's art scene is that the artists try too much to emulate the New York gallery scene, rather than searching for a personal expression that is native to this region (the way Benton did). My favorite artist in KC is Dean Mitchell. He does mostly realistic portraits and city scenes, primarily in watercolor but also in oils.

There is also a growing number of murals popping up in Kansas City. Many of these are done by graffiti-style artists. A large concentration of these type of murals exists in the Westport area. There are also community-based murals in KC. The artistic team of Jesus Ortiz, Alisha Gambino, and Joe Faus have lead several projects, the most notable being the 200-yard long Anthology of Argentine mural in Kansas City, Kansas, which details the history of the Argentine neighborhood, a largely Hispanic community.

The best murals in Kansas are not in KC, but in nearby Atchison, Kansas. (Click here to take a look).

A portion of the Anthology of Argentine mural, showing a historic period of racial unrest.

(Above and below) Two graffiti murals (sorry, I don't know the artists' names)

Fresco murals at UMKC, painted by Luis Quintanilla,
an artist who fled Franco's fascist regime in Spain.

There are two major art museums in Kansas City. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is the huge, traditional art museum, with an excellent collection covering everything from ancient Egypt to the present. They have an especially nice selection of impressionist paintings, late-nineteenth century landscapes, Asian art, and the works of Thomas Hart Benton, of course. The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art is a smaller (though expanding) museum which offers cutting-edge exhibitions by today's movers and shakers in the art world. They also have a permanent collection of works from about 1950 to the present, featuring some true gems by the likes of Stella, Rauschenberg, and Wyeth. Another art site of minor interest is the Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site, for diehard fans only.

Kansas City Attractions

Country Club Plaza
www.countryclubplaza.com
Shopping, dining, hotels, entertainment, services, cinema, art – all in all, a great place to walk around, waste time, and spend money! Take a look at what $1 million can provide in fountains, statues, and tiled murals. Downsized copies of two famous towers from Seville, Spain are recreated here – one houses not a mosque, but instead - The Cheesecake Factory! Ah, America the Great!

Westport Area, Kansas City
Another hub for entertainment – this place has a line-up of restaurants, dance clubs, bars, and stores of many different kinds. Less upscale and more unique (ie: more Bohemia) than the Plaza, it also has a movie theatre, The Tivoli, where we go to for foreign and independent films.

Union Station
www.unionstation.org
Home to the City Extreme Screen (IMAX-like theatre), Science City – a great museum for kids and immature adults, restaurants ranging from mall quality to top of the line (Pierpont’s), and a walkway link to the Crown Center Mall. It is situated across the street from the Liberty Memorial Museum on the other side of the Henry Wollman Bloch Memorial Fountain. Beautifully restored in 1999, the Grand Hall of Union Station is an eye-catching stop.

Crown Center
www.crowncenter.com
The world headquarters for Hallmark Cards, Crown Center has restaurants from Japanese, Italian, faster foods, and the Crayola Café. You’ll also find adjacent hotels, unique shopping specialty stores, and during the weekend of May 6-8, a Cinco de Mayo celebration.

The Arabia Steamboat Museum
www.1856.com
The Arabia Steamboat Museum located downtown in the Rivermarket District. ”Explore our museum and learn how the handsome steamer Arabia prospered on the rivers, perished in 1856 and was finally rediscovered 132 years later, precious cargo intact.”

Toy and Miniature Museum
www.umkc.edu/tmm/
This museum, hosted by the University of Missouri-Kansas City and located on campus, is a beautiful building made up of 24 rooms filled with antique dolls, doll’s houses, cast iron toys, trains, and scale miniatures.

Fountains
Kansas City is known as the “City of Fountains” for having more fountains than any other city except Rome.
www.kcfountains.org

To see a few famous fountains:
www.kansascity.about.com/cs/metrotourism/l/blfountains1.htm
www.experiencekc.com/fountains.html

Loose Park
A great place to go for a walk or picnic, the seasonal rose garden will be starting to flourish in May and lasts through October. It smells great and looks gorgeous – many couples get married and take wedding photos here. Dogs have a great time running through an open, large, green lawn and there are duck ponds and tennis courts. The park is located just south of the Plaza on 52nd and Wornall.

American Jazz Museum and Negro Leagues Baseball Museum
www.americanjazzmuseum.com
“Inside the American Jazz Museum, the essence and living spirit of jazz legends fill the atmosphere, as the story of jazz and her greatest performers is told through the sights and sounds of one the most interactive museums in the country.” Also houses the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and located just southeast of downtown.

Kansas City Zoo
www.kansascityzoo.org
“The Kansas City Zoo sits on 202 acres of rolling hills in the middle of Swope Park, the second largest urban park in the United States.” It is the home to almost 900 animals from six continents and hosts an IMAX theatre.

Powell Gardens
www.powellgardens.org
Kansas City’s only botanical garden situated east of downtown, almost an hour’s drive, has 915 acres of beauty under conservation for our enjoyment.

Atchison

Located about 45 minutes to an hour northwest of Kansas City, Atchison is a charming little town overlooking the Missouri River. It is not known for much except being the birthplace of Amelia Earhart and supposedly having the most haunted houses in Kansas. What it should be known for, however, are the fantastic murals painted by Jean Charlot in the St. Benedict Abbey. Jean Charlot was a Mexican artist (emigrated from France) who was an instrumental part of the Mexican mural movement in the early 20th century. He worked as an assistant to Diego Rivera, as well as painting murals of his own. He was also instrumental in championing the revival of the Renaissance technique of fresco painting. Through Charlot's persuasion, most of Mexico's great muralists utilized this labor-intensive but chemically permanent method of painting. Charlot painted other murals in the U.S., most notably at the University of Georgia, where he taught for a while. I do not know the details of what brought Charlot to Atchison, Kansas. He painted the murals in 1959, using the fresco technique. The main mural takes up the entire wall behind the altar in the main chapel of the Abbey. There are two smaller murals in other chapels in the basement. The Benedictine Abbey is open for you to view the murals, as long as there isn't a mass going on at the time.

All artwork and photographs in this site ©Karl Janssen, unless otherwise noted.
No reproduction of images without permission.