Past Exhibitions

The AKMA will host the final segment of the contemporary art traveling exhibition Missouri Art Now: A Bicentennial Celebration, an exhibition comprised of 60 artworks from 60 artists representing the state’s vibrant visual arts culture. A collaboration between six art centers across the state, it presents a snapshot of contemporary art from all four corners of Missouri–including seventeen artists from our Northwest region!

This is the first public exhibition of the corporate collection from local entrepreneur Joseph “Joe” Gray, co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of Gray Manufacturing based in St. Joseph, MO. Gray started collecting artwork in the mid-1960s and his collection has grown to over 1,300 pieces. This exhibition includes over 100 fine art paintings, drawings, and sculptures on loan from his businesses and home. 

Refracted Reality: The Work of Jim Cantrell is a retrospective of over six decades of work by Kentucky-based artist Jim Cantrell. This will be the third exhibition at the AKMA of Cantrell’s work – the first taking place in 1991.

An opening reception will be held on Friday, November 19, 2021 from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. Opening receptions are free and open to the public. A cash bar and light refreshments will be available. Attendees are requested to wear masks inside the museum when not actively eating or drinking.

About the Artist:

Jim Cantrell was born and raised in Oklahoma and completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Nebraska.  Though his student years coincided with the rise of Abstract Expressionism as the most prominent style of American painting, Cantrell was always interested in representing people, still lifes and cityscapes. In his portraits he often surrounds his subjects with objects with mirrored surfaces or mylar backgrounds that create distorted shapes and colors that are no less real than the person at the center of the composition.

Although Cantrell is trained as a painter, in the beginning stages of his career as a full-time artist he focused on pottery. In the 1970s, he and his wife Jeannette established the Bardstown Art Gallery that they continue to run in Bardstown, Kentucky. 

The Missouri Valley Impressionist Society (MVIS) will hold its 10th annual juried exhibition at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art from November 20, 2021 to January 9, 2022.

An opening reception will be held on Friday, November 19, 2021 from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm. Opening receptions are free and open to the public. A cash bar and light refreshments will be available. Visitors are requested to wear masks inside the museum when not actively eating and drinking.

The Missouri Valley Impressionist Society is dedicated to promoting the appreciation and development of Impressionism throughout the Missouri River Valley Region. MVIS membership is open to anyone, and exhibitions are exclusively held in nine states: Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

This is the third time the MVIS has held its annual juried exhibition at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, once in 2014 and most recently in 2019. In 2021, the MVIS exhibition will be judged by AKMA Executive Director Eric Fuson.

Featuring artwork by Kansas City-based artists Benjamin Parks and Kathy Liao. On view at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art January 15 – April 16, 2022. Read the press release here.

An opening reception will be held on Friday, January 14, 2022 from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. Opening receptions are FREE and open to the public. A cash bar and light refreshments will be available. Attendees are requested to wear face masks while not actively eating and drinking.

An exhibition highlighting Stephen Johnson and Karen Matheis’ body of work will be on view at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art from Saturday, April 23 until Sunday, June 12, 2022.

These exhibitions will take place in tandem with the 6th annual National Undergraduate Juried Exhibition.

An opening reception will be held on Friday, April 22, 2022 from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. Opening receptions are free and open to the public. A cash bar and light refreshments will be available. Masks are requested of all visitors in the museum while not actively eating and drinking.

About Stephen Johnson

This exhibition will be a mix of artwork from Stephen Johnson’s collection and his own work to explore how is influenced by the art around him. Stephen T. Johnson’s figurative work spans a 38-year career, beginning with an academic charcoal figure study made in the mid-1980s at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, France and followed by personal works and commissioned illustrations for nationally published magazines, record companies, and award-winning children’s books. This exhibition pairs and contrasts artwork from his personal collection, including a 17^th-century portrait of King Charles II from the studio of Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674), important drawings and paintings by Symbolist artists Eugène Carrière (1849-1906) and Otto Greiner (1869-1916), works by two Guggenheim Fellows, John Theodore Johnson (1902-1963), the artist’s grandfather, and the iconic 20^th-century caricaturist David Levine (1926-2009), plus present-day masters of interpreting, depicting, and rendering with paint, the human form.

Stephen T. Johnson’s visually arresting and conceptually rich body of work forges connections between words, objects, and ideas. His art spans a broad range of concepts and contexts and can be seen in site-specific public art commissions, gallery and museum exhibitions, and original award-winning children’s books such “Alphabet City,” a Caldecott Honor and a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year.  

His drawings and paintings are in numerous private collections including those of musician Paul Simon and actress Cherry Jones, and are in the permanent collections of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut, and the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.  

Among his public art is a 66-foot mosaic mural at the DeKalb Avenue Subway Station in Brooklyn New York, a 58-foot mosaic mural at the Universal City/Studio City Metro Station in Los Angeles, California, and 33 glass panels for the Dallas Love Field Airport, in Dallas, Texas. 

Please find him online at www.stephentjohnson.com and www.instagram.com/stj_art/

About Karen Matheis

Karen Matheis is an oil painter inspired by the landscape near her home in Lawrence, Kansas. Matheis’ work is abstracted bird’s eye views of the land. Her work focuses on how human-made infrastructure reflects the patterns of the natural world. Her artwork can be seen in private and corporate collections nationwide. 

Of her series, Piece Work/Peace Work on display in the exhibition, Matheis writes, “I created the paintings in this exhibition in response to the stress associated with the pandemic and essential work status. Patchwork landscape evolved with the concept of a quilt as a source of comfort and symbolic of home and family.”

Ariel Bowman creates sculptures of prehistoric animals in the style of the guilded or golden age of craftmanship. This comes with a twist: although all of her kinetic sculptures – oftentimes in the form of a clock – function, all of the clock mechanisms run backwards in time.

“I make sculptures of prehistoric animals that represent the wonder to be found in natural history. I am intrigued by animals that evolved with distinct features, such as unfamiliar tusks, strange, elongated limbs, and unusual proportions. I use clay to bring these animals back to life, sculpting folds of flesh and filling their bellies with air. The goal of my work is to bridge the gap between art and science. Within my work I employ reflective nostalgia and imaginative realism to place extinct creatures in the context of human history.” – Ariel Bowman

See more about Ariel Bowman

About Ariel: Ariel Bowman was raised in Dallas, Texas where her parents are both artists. Growing up, she spent a lot of time outside with animals. The undeveloped woodlands that surrounded her childhood home inspired her to create art that focused on the natural world. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2011, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Florida in 2018. She has studied abroad at the International Ceramics Studio in Hungary and was awarded the Regina K. Brown NCECA undergraduate and graduate fellowships. Ariel has been an artist in residence at the Armory Art Center and her work has been collected by the Belger Arts Center, the Florida Museum of Natural History, and the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts. She is currently the ceramics studio manager for the Concho Clay Studio at the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts.

An opening reception will be held for Ariel’s exhibition on Friday, June 17, 2022 from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. Opening receptions are free and open to the public. A cash bar and light refreshments will be available.

This exhibition is in tandem with two others on view at the same time: Leaving and Waving by Deanna Dikeman and the AKMA Found Object Exhibition. Entry into the museum gives visitors access to all of the exhibition spaces. Plan your visit here.

“Found art is created when odd, disparate, unlikely, even long-abandoned castoffs are put together with other similarly unexpected remnants to create something new and, if all goes as planned, lovely.”

Leeana Tankersley, Found Art: Discovering Beauty in Foreign Places

The AKMA has challenged regional artists to create something new from found objects. For the past six months, artists have been working on entries for this exhibition. Will they paint it? Photograph it? It is up to the artist on how they would like to answer this challenge. Let’s discover together what they have created.

An opening reception will be held for this exhibition on Friday, June 17, 2022 from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. Opening receptions are free and open to the public. A cash bar and light refreshments will be available. Artists and community members alike are invited to attend.

This exhibition is in tandem with two others on view at the same time: Leaving and Waving by Deanna Dikeman and The Golden Age by Ariel Bowman. Entry into the museum gives visitors access to all of the exhibition spaces. Plan your visit here.

Deanna Dikeman’s series of photographs Leaving and Waving documents her experience saying goodbye to her parents over a 27-year time period.

About Deanna: Deanna Dikeman was born in Sioux City, Iowa, USA, and currently resides in Kansas City. She has photographed her midwestern family and surroundings since 1985, when she left a corporate job to try a photography class. She has M.S. and B.S. degrees from Purdue University. Since 1988, Deanna has had seventeen solo shows and has been included in over 150 group and two-person shows. 

See more about Deanna Dikeman

An opening reception will be held for Deanna’s exhibition on Friday, June 17, 2022 from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. Opening receptions are free and open to the public. A cash bar and light refreshments will be available.

Deanna Dikeman will be giving an artist talk on Tuesday, August 23rd at 6:00pm. This event is free and open to the public. It will take place in the gallery of her work.

This exhibition is in tandem with two others on view at the same time: The Golden Age featuring artwork by Ariel Bowman and the AKMA Found Object Exhibition. Entry into the museum gives visitors access to all of the exhibition spaces. Plan your visit here.

On view September 17 to November 6, 2022

Heinrich Toh is a Kansas City-based printmaker and 2D mixed media artist. Originally from Singapore, he graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art and the La Salle College of the Arts. His work is part of the permanent collections of the University Hospital of Cleveland and the Dell Children’s Hospital in Texas, and the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art. He has exhibited at the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle and several galleries throughout the US.

An opening reception will be held for this exhibition on Friday, September 16, 2022 from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. Opening receptions are free and open to the public. A cash bar will be available with light refreshments.

This exhibition will be held in tandem with the Norman Akers exhibition. Find out more about this exhibition.

Find out more about Heinrich Toh here.

On view September 17 to November 6, 2022

Norman Akers is a Lawrence, Kansas-based artist who explores issues of identity and culture, including Osage mythos, place, and the dynamics of personal and cultural transformation.

Akers holds a BFA in Painting from the Kansas City Art Institute and a MFA degree in Painting from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Visual Art at the University of Kansas. Akers is an enrolled member of the Osage Nation.

An opening reception will be held for this exhibition on Friday, September 16, 2022 from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. Opening receptions are free and open to the public. A cash bar will be available with light refreshments.

This exhibition will be held in tandem with the Heinrich Toh exhibition. Find out more about this exhibition.

Find out more about Norman Akers here.

AKMA is honored to feature works from Northwest Missouri State Universities faculty. This exhibition will be on display from December 3, 2022 through January 8, 2023. Artists include the following:

Dyan Akkouche

Tom LaPann

Feixue Mei

Armin Mühsam

Miranda Myles-Jackson

Sarah Sipling

Veronica Watkins

Artists, peers, family, friends and members of the community are invited to celebrate this exhibition opening during a reception on Friday evening, December 2, 2022 from 4:00-7:00pm. Opening receptions are free and open to the public. A cash bar and light refreshments will be available.

Brought out of the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art for the very first time, Stampede of Bronzes is surely to impress.

With over 30 bronze statues, paintings and drawings throughout time and history, these pieces are just as unique as the viewer.

An opening reception for this show will be held on December 2, 2022 from 4:00-7:00pm. Appetizers and a cash bar will be available.

This exhibition is on view January 14 – February 19, 2023.

Now in its 49^th iteration, the annual Membership Exhibition showcases works exclusively by current museum members. Each member may submit two original works not previously exhibited at the museum. Artworks are divided into ten categories: Oil and Acrylic Painting; Watercolor Painting; Drawing: pencil, pastel, pen and ink; Printmaking; Photography; Ceramics; 2D Mixed Media; Sculpture & 3D Mixed Media; Digital Art; Fiber and Textiles. Entries are evaluated on technique, composition, and aesthetic appeal by a panel of adjudicators from the St. Joseph arts community. The exhibition features 188 works created by 105 artists.

An opening reception was held on Friday, January 13, 2023 from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. The Awards Ceremony was presented at 6:00 pm. Opening receptions are FREE and open to the public. A cash bar and light refreshments will be available.

The list of winners is below.

Best in Show Jim Lawrence, Charlotte

Painting: Oil and Acrylic

1st: Jim Lawrence, Charlotte

2nd: Jim Lawrence, Merle

3rd: Linda Kinder, Snow Covered

HM: Max King, Fusion

HM: Karen Case, Bake!

Painting

Watercolor 1st: Candace Castle, Last Chapter

2nd: Kim Hines, Bluff Woods

3rd: Melinda Hopper, Spectrum

Drawing

1st: Jean Terry, Sit’n Tall

2nd: Wanda Taylor, Orange & Blue

3rd: Dan Maxey, Pearl

HM: Donna Jean Boyer, Contemplation

HM: Ruthie Ingram, Ancient Art of Beauty

Printmaking

1st: Don Anderson, The Scout

2nd (tie): Cynthia Pederson, Healing Heart

2nd (tie): William Eickhorst, Anal-Retentive Madness

Photography

1st: Keith Foster, Kansas Homestead

2nd (tie): Laura Taylor, Spill the Beans

2nd (tie): Dennis Weiser, Winter Composition #2

2nd (tie): Dennis Weiser, Winter Composition #1

3rd: Holly Rudolf, Lake Medora HM: Alysa Ramsey, Goggles

Pottery & Ceramics

1st: David Harris, Smooch

2nd: David Harris, Under Water

3rd: Sam Perkins, Homonid Mandible

HM: Leila Hicks, Head Jug- Philippine

HM: Daphne Bryan, Bower

2-D Mixed Media

1st: Laurel DeFreece, Winds of Change #1

2nd: Laurel DeFreece, Winds of Change #2

3rd: Andrea Aeschliman, Say Yes HM: Deanna Trapp, Summer Morn

Sculpture & 3D Mixed Media

1st: Dave Pearson, Down the Ridge

2nd: Bettie Belinger-Liechti, Untitled

3rd: Alicia Halpin, Architectural Undigested

HM: Pat Benedict, Skullcap Mushroom Witch

Digital Art

1st: Carolyn Anderson, ART

2nd: Jerry Hirt, The Beauty of Alaska

3rd: Jeff Foster, Quilt

Fiber and Textiles

1st: Linda Benitz, Standing Red Woman

2nd (tie): Megan S. Wyeth, Lavender sky

2nd (tie): Samantaha Halter-Neeley, Autumn Renewal 3rd: Jan Powell, Custodi Mortem Sempre Ante Te (Keep Death Always Before You)

For over 40 years the AKMA has been showcasing the talent of high school artists in Northwest Missouri and Northeast Kansas. Entry into the Regional High School Exhibition is by invitation only and extends to high schoolers in Northwest Missouri, Northeast Kansas, Kansas City and in the surrounding areas. A “Best of Show” award will be presented along with honors for artists in each category. This exhibition will be on view Sunday, February 26 until Sunday, April 16, 2023.

Artists, peers, family members, and the community are invited to celebrate the opening of this annual tradition with an opening reception on Sunday afternoon, February 26, 2023 from 1:00 to 4:00 pm. Opening receptions are free and open to the public.

2023 High School Show Winners List

2023 High School Show Participants List

On view February 25 to April 16, 2023

John Hulsey was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1953, and studied painting at the Kansas City Art Institute and the University of Kansas before moving to New York in 1980 to paint and exhibit his work. He returned to the Midwest in 1990 to build a studio and home. 

   His work has been exhibited in solo and juried group exhibitions, and in galleries in New York, Ohio, South Carolina, Missouri, Kansas, Texas, Wyoming and California and has received numerous awards and grants.  His painting was featured on the cover of Time Magazine and his paintings are included in many private and corporate collections: University of South Carolina Medical School; Blue Cross/Blue Shield, St. Louis, Mo., Environmental Law Institute, Washington, D.C.; Pace University Environmental Law School, White Plains, NY., the Hudson River Reference Collection, Garrison, NY., National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., McGraw Hill Publishing, New York, NY., The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY., The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, St. Joseph, Mo., and the United States Embassies in Australia and Jordan.       John’s art has been featured in American Artist magazine, Watercolor Magazine, Fine Art Connoisseur magazine and International Artist Magazine, where he was named a Master Painter of the United States.  He has been awarded residencies by the National Parks Service at Glacier National Park, Yosemite National Park, and Rocky Mountain National Park. Watercolor magazine featured John’s plein air painting workshops in Provence, France, in the Fall, 2004 issue.  A monograph on his artwork appeared in the April 2006 issue of Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine. In 2019, International Artist magazine asked him to create a seven-part series of articles, A Painter’s Journey, which chronicles the development of his solo exhibition, “Transcendence- Truth in Nature”.

The 7^th annual National Undergraduate Juried Exhibition is open to students enrolled in undergraduate programs in the United States during the 2022-2023 academic year. Works will be on view at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art from Saturday, April 22 to Sunday, June 4, 2023. Entrants must be 18 years of age or older, and all artworks must be the original work of the submitting artist and created within a year of submission. Past participants have come from a dozen academic institutions in nine different states. A “Best of Show” award will be presented to one artist based on artistic merit by a jury.

Artists, peers, family members, and the community are invited to celebrate the opening of this annual tradition with an opening reception on Friday, April 21, 2023, from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. Opening receptions are free and open to the public. A cash bar and light refreshments will be available.

Entry form and $10 entry fee is required. For entry form visit: albrecht-kemper.org/call-for-artists

To submit payment for entry:

On view June 10 through September 17, 2023.

Featuring artwork by Mary Cassatt, Jacqueline Bishop, Donna Bachmann, Deborah Butterfield, Kara Walker, Hedda Sterne, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Louise Nevelson, Hung Liu, Elizabeth Layton, Susan Fay, Teresa Harris, and many more.

An opening reception will be held for this exhibition on Friday, June 9, 2023 from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. Opening receptions are free and open to the public. A cash bar will be available with light refreshments.

Image: Kathe Kollwitz, Self Portrait, n.d. Etching (restrike). Purchased with funds from the William Toben Memorial Fund.