Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art facts for kids
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| Established | 1994 |
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| Location | 4420 Warwick Boulevard, Kansas City, Missouri, United States |
| Type | Art museum |
The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art is a cool place in Kansas City, Missouri. It opened in 1994 and is a big museum for modern art in Missouri. About 75,000 people visit it every year!
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Founders of the Museum
The museum was started by Bebe and R. Crosby Kemper Jr.. They gave many artworks from their own collection to the museum. This gift became the main part of the museum's permanent collection. In 2013, their daughter, Mary Kemper Wolf, became the main leader of the museum's board.
Art Collection
The Kemper Museum has a huge collection of over 1,400 artworks. These pieces were made after 1913 by many different artists. You can see art by famous names like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, and David Hockney. Other artists include Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Jim Dine, and William Wegman.
The museum also received 15 artworks from the collection of Peter Norton in 2000. These included pieces by the photographer Nan Goldin. Besides its main collection, the museum often shows special exhibitions. Each year, the museum hosts about 10 to 12 new shows in its galleries.
The "Canyon Suite" Paintings
When the museum first opened in 1994, it showed 28 watercolors by Georgia O'Keeffe. These paintings were called the "Canyon Suite." They had never been shown together before. Later, in 1999, some questions came up about if the paintings were real. The paper used for some of them did not match the time when O'Keeffe made them. Because of this, the paintings were not included in O'Keeffe's official list of works. The gallery that sold them to the museum gave the money back.
Museum Building Design
The Kemper Museum building is made of concrete, steel, and glass. It is 23,200 square feet in size. The building was designed by architect Gunnar Birkerts and was finished in 1994. It cost about $6.6 million to build.
The museum has a large open area in the middle called an atrium. This area has a special skylight above it. Two wings stretch out from the sides of the atrium. The main gallery in one wing hosts three big exhibitions each year. Smaller galleries show different works from the museum's permanent collection. You can always see art in the atrium and the hallways of each wing.
Café Sebastienne
Inside the museum, you'll find Café Sebastienne. It's a place where you can enjoy food surrounded by art. The dining area has 110 paintings by the African-American artist Frederick J. Brown. These paintings are called "The History of Art." The restaurant was named after his daughter, Sebastienne Nicole Brown.
