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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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Julie Blackmon: A Life in Frame

Opening later this month, Julie Blackmon: A Life in Frame is a survey that exhibition focuses on the last decade of Springfield, MO-based photographer Julie Blackmon's work showing scenes depicting family, community, and landscape to evoke playful and critical examinations of the modern family, feminism, and other social and political issues.


This exhibition is presenting work made over the past 10 years. How has your work changed over that period? 

When I began taking pictures I was primarily interested in documenting the lives of my five sisters and myself as we raised our families in the same neighborhood in Springfield, Missouri. I wanted to capture the captivating everyday moments that were unfolding in front of me. But over time, I gradually became less of a documentarian and began introducing narrative strands into the work, aiming to create visual fictions that captured the truth more deeply than a snapshot or a mirror every could. The realization that fiction could capture the truth better than the truth itself was a major shift in how I saw the world around me, and it was probably what really changed my work the most.

How do you decide what you want to make a work about?

Any number of things could trigger an idea for me. Maybe it’s discovering one hot summer day on a tall ladder, that if I looked down at my aunt’s stock tank on the wet blacktop driveway in the midday sun, it looked like a planet in the solar system. Or seeing the original Jasper John’s famous Flag painting for the first time at Crystal Bridges Museum and a memory old family photo from the 1970’s where my mom was proudly posed with her Fourth of July flag cake that she made every year…it actually reminded me of a cake because of the way he applied the paint. These weird and funny contradictions in American culture always inspire and delight me.

What was your exposure to the arts like growing up?

My mom was an artist. She never really sold her work or had shows or galleries exhibiting it. But she lived it. She was always painting murals on all the walls of our house. I remember lying on my back under the dining room table one day as a little girl,  looking up at her up on a ladder with her palette, painting this gigantic pastural scene on the dining room wall. I’ll never forget the sky, and the red barn on a hill in the distance and country scene that just came to life one day. All the while there was usually a baby or two crying in the background, probably left in a playpen somewhere, but she didn’t let it stop her. She had all those kids, but she was very much her own person, and not defined by conventional motherhood at all. I think she modeled that way of life for us…but not intentionally!

Your scenes are often both cheerful and precarious. They get at appreciating an aspect of your identity or the place where you live and have history, but having those positive feelings coexist with some discomfort. Does that resonate with you?

I am mostly interested in creating pictures that are social commentary, or that reveal the humor and complexities of everyday American life that transcend the small town midwestern setting. It just so happens that creating this work in a town with a generic name in the middle of the country is the perfect place to do this. But as for these different contradicting elements coexisting in my work…yes, a mix of the delightful and the dark is always what I’m aiming for, ha ha!

What's are some of the best things about working in Springfield? What are some of the hardest things about working in Springfield, MO?

I still live in the same neighborhood I was raised in. I’m very aware that that that doesn’t sound cool. It’s ok to be from a place like Springfield, MO, but it’s not okay to still be there! But I think there’s a confidence that comes from working in a place you know that well. There’s a certain amount of information that comes from staying in a place like this your whole life…you know everybody, you know who lives in each house, and who lived there before they did… going back 30–40 years. You know your history. I have the luxury of sitting on a porch swing every afternoon with sisters and neighbors, talking neighborhood gossip, politics, art and laughing at everything. The material I have to draw on is endless. I can’t imagine working anywhere else.