Julie Blackmon: A Life in a Frame Delights at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
At first glance, Julie Blackmon’s photographs might remind you of Norman Rockwell’s work for the covers of Life magazine. You smile at the familiarity, the nostalgia, the quirkiness.
But as you look closer, you notice there is more going on. Compositions echo works by 19th-century artist George Caleb Bingham, 17th-century Dutch painters, and even photographer Diane Arbus. “Each frame,” writes Los Angeles Times art critic Leah Ollman, “is a meticulously orchestrated slice of ethnographic theater…that abounds with tender humor but also shrewdly subtle satire.”
Julie Blackmon: A Life in Frame surveys ten years of the artist’s work, depicting Midwestern family and community life in and around Springfield, Missouri. These 20 works also address themes of feminism, social and political issues, and the modern family. In 2008, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art was the first museum to acquire her work, exhibiting four photographs.
This exhibit includes those four photographs and more from local collections and runs through January 7, 2024. Click here for more information.
Jekyll & Hyde
When Robert Louis Stevenson unleashed the gothic novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on the world in 1886, he had no idea how it would live on in the popular imagination. Long interested in the struggle between good and evil in every human, Stevenson produced a work that shocked readers then and now.
To date, there have been over 120 adaptations of this work for stage, screen, musical, video games, and now ballet, choreographed by Val Caniparoli. The ballet debuted in Finland in 2020.
From October 13 through 22, Jekyll and Hyde takes the stage for its North American premiere at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.
Told through dance in a feverish and increasingly hallucinatory atmosphere, the good Dr. Henry Jekyll battles his evil alter-ego Edward Hyde, alternating between the streets of Victorian England and a 19th-century madhouse until the lines blur. With music by the Kansas City Symphony and scenery and costume design by David Israel Reynoso, the stage is set for the Kansas City Ballet’s main company dancers to perform the roles.
Click here for more information and tickets.
Hilary Hahn, Violin
Three-time Grammy Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn returns to Kansas City on October 13 at the Folly Theater, part of the Harriman-Jewell Series. Since Hahn made her Kansas City debut in 2004, she has traveled the world as a much in-demand soloist with leading conductors and orchestras.
Hahn says that she has played a Bach solo piece every day since she was 8 years old. “Bach is, for me, the touchstone that keeps my playing honest,” she says. “Keeping the intonation pure in double stops, bringing out the various voices where the phrasing requires it, crossing the strings so that there are not inadvertent accents, presenting the structure in such a way that it’s clear to the listener without being pedantic—one can’t fake things in Bach, and if one gets all of them to work, the music sings in the most wonderful way.”
Artistically curious, Hahn draws from a rich and wide-open repertoire of classical music and contemporary, newly commissioned pieces that reach a global audience. A fan favorite, Hahn blends technical brilliance with expressive musicality to create a prolific performing and recording career.
Click here for more information and tickets.
A Happy-Go-Lucky Evening with David Sedaris
During lockdown for Covid, some people ate and drank too much. Some renovated their homes. Others, like David Sedaris, reflected on their unique lives—his included becoming an orphan at almost 70 years of age—and wrote a new collection of essays titled Happy-Go-Lucky.
But no one performs their written work in quite the same way as Sedaris. Humorous, poignant, acerbic, pointed, universal. No wonder he has been called a “champion storyteller” in print and in person.
In this new collection, which he will perform on Sunday, October 22 at Helzberg Hall, Sedaris tackles the dichotomies in American life that he views up close while on tour and from afar, from where he lives in England. The performance also includes a Q&A and a book signing.