Art and Art History

Lucite Plains is a new performance collaboration between Kansas City-based artists and UMKC professors Ricky Allman and Barry Anderson. Combing elements of Allman's paintings and installations with Anderson's work in video and animation, and adding music composed for analog synthesizers and guitars, the performances create a psychedelic futurist experience. The concept came from a melding of themes they have been working on individually for the past few years including eco-futurism, geological ritualism, ancient mythology and retro utopian visions.

Learn more about about the complete performance schedule and ticket info.

Professor Frances Connelly, Ph.D., a professor in the UMKC Department of Art and Art History, will serve as a Visiting Fellow at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in June 2018. While there, she will lead a seminar as part of the “Van Gogh Museum Visiting Fellow in the History of Nineteenth Century Art” program.

The Van Gogh Museum’s program, now entering its 12th year, brings foreign scholars annually to the Netherlands to teach a seminar in 19th century art to graduate students and professionals. Connelly’s seminar is entitled The Grotesque in Late Nineteenth-Century Art. It will explore the workings of the grotesque in this unsettled and unsettling period and explore why it is a particularly powerful means to grapple with its social upheavals and cultural shifts.

Dr. Joseph Hartman, Assistant Professor in the UMKC Department of Art and Art History and Latinx and Latin American Studies program, recently received an internationally competitive grant from the Graham Foundation, one of the most significant funders in the field of architecture. Hartman was one of only 74 proposals selected out of over 600 applicants worldwide.

“This award will surely go down as one of the proudest moments of my career,” Hartman said. “To gain recognition from a world-renowned architectural organization like the Graham is affirming not only to the quality of my research but also to the rising visibility and importance of Caribbean, Latin American and Latinx communities."

The Routledge volume Perception and Agency in Shared Spaces of Contemporary Art, co-edited by UMKC Art History Professor Cristina Albu, was recently published.

The book calls for a situational approach to art, which is informed by the intertwining of art theory, phenomenology and cognitive sciences. It offers an interdisciplinary inquiry into the mutability of art experience, showing that it is contingent on an array of deeply entangled biological, cultural, political and social systems. The volume gathers 18 chapters by senior and emerging scholars.

Heather Burton, an Olathe, Kansas, native, graduated with her Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art in December 2017. Before graduating though, she'd already landed a job. Check out Heather's story in this Q&A:

How was your graduation day?

It was overwhelming to me. It’s the day you work so hard for since you’re 5. I kept worrying about my cap falling off, and of course it did as I walked up to receive my diploma.

Totemic Persona, by Barry Anderson, M.F.A., digital motion professor and chair of the UMKC Department of Art and Art History, is being shown at the KC Streetcar Metro Center Northbound Stop and Kiosk, located at 12th and Main Street in Kansas City, Missouri.

UMKC College of Arts and Sciences Associate Dean and Studio Art Professor Kati Toivanen was one of 25 artists selected for the third annual Art in the Loop Project in Kansas City, Missouri.

Toivanen’s work, a larger-than-life rendition of the childhood game of hopscotch entitled “Hopscotch,” will be on display in Ilus Davis Park at 11th Street and Locust through September.

“Hopscotch aims to provide moments of surprise and playful delight in the downtown business environment,” Toivanen said. “Images of familiar toys and even a spilled ice cream cone merge into the sidewalk, inviting participation from viewers.”

University of Missouri - Kansas City College of Arts and Sciences Associate Dean and Studio Art Professor Kati Toivanen was one of eight artists selected for the 28th annual Lawrence Outdoor Downtown Sculpture Exhibition in Lawrence, Kansas.

An opening reception and walking tour will take place at 5:30 pm on Friday, June 10 beginning at the South Park/Parks and Recreation office. The artwork will be on display through Spring 2017.

Toivanen embellished public waste receptacles with custom image panels. The inspiration for her piece, entitled “Treasure Hunt,” came from local shops and vendors in downtown Lawrence.

Ricky Allman is best known for explosive post-apocalyptic paintings inspired by his rejection of his Mormon upbringing.

In his new works, the Kansas City artist continues to move away from the dire visions of his past to guardedly optimistic predictions for the future.

“I don’t believe in the apocalypse of humanity; despite all our problems, we’re definitely going to figure out our way,” Allman says.

Allman remains attached to his signature motifs of architecture, the mountains of his native Utah, and airy, confetti-like exhalations, but he now places them at the service of futuristic imaginings.

As an artist known for making impressively scaled signs and combining hip-hop symbols with references to Christianity — Google him and his brilliant Prayer Booths still come up first — Dylan Mortimer has always made personal art. But his latest exhibition transcends the personal for something revelatory. Cure is his externalized dialogue with God, one in which he attempts to lay out the terms of his genetic lot, his cystic fibrosis.

Speaking to about 15 people at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center on a Monday evening in December