KANSAS CITY, MO, May 24, 2021: Charlotte Street will celebrate the unveiling of its new headquarters and arts campus during a two-day public Grand Opening June 11-12. Two exhibitions will premiere during the opening weekend: Who We Were, Who We Are, Who We Will Be and [Phainesthai] Prairie Translations.
Over the past 24 years, Charlotte Street has transformed Kansas City’s cultural landscape, providing direct financial support to hundreds of individual artists and emerging art operations each year in the form of grants, awards, and commissions, as well as free studios and performance and exhibition spaces. The Kansas City community also benefits from Charlotte Street’s robust calendar of over 100 free public events every year – including exhibits, workshops, performances, and presentations
Charlotte Street’s new campus is a multidisciplinary, multifaceted facility that sets a new national standard for collaborative artist incubators. Located in a repurposed industrial factory, the renovated space embraces the building’s raw and resilient texture as a backdrop for the creation of innovative work. The facility includes a black box theatre, visual art gallery, dance rehearsal studio, recording and mixing studio, artist-in-residence studios, equipment workshop, library and archive room, and gathering spaces.
Designed by Hufft and constructed by Newkirk Novak, the contemporary 20,000 sq. ft. campus is located at 3333 Wyoming Street in midtown Kansas City, Missouri, near Roanoke Park. The $10 million campaign for Charlotte Street’s headquarters began in 2018, propelled by an anonymous $5 million matching challenge. Construction began in 2019.
The new headquarters aims not just to facilitate the work of Kansas City artists, but to be a central catalyst for the regional arts ecosystem.
Executive/Artistic Director Amy Kligman notes,
“This space physically manifests our mission and values – it is artist-centric, meant to foster collaboration and cross-pollination across disciplines, and is a wildly flexible resource that adapts in response to the artist community we serve. We’ve always known that it’s the artists that will actually make the space whatever it’s meant to be, and we can’t wait to see that happen!”
Charlotte Street’s Grand Opening is sponsored by Spencer Fane. For additional information about Charlotte Street’s new headquarters and Grand Opening weekend events, please contact Amanda Middaugh, Development and Marketing Director, at [email protected] or 816.699.7765 (cell).
FRIDAY, JUNE 11, 4-9 PM
A ribbon cutting ceremony will be held at 4PM in the central courtyard, featuring remarks from Executive/Artistic Director Amy Kligman and Board of Directors President Jean-Paul Wong. Visitors can then participate in guided tours of the new facility. The exhibitions Who We Were, Who We Are, Who We Will Be in the gallery and [Phainesthai] Prairie Translations will premiere at 5PM in the theater. Performances for Phainesthai at 6:30 and 7:30PM will include a film screening and live music by the Switchgrass String Quartet. To RSVP and for additional COVID protocols and parking information, visit www.charlottestreet.org.
SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 12-5 PM
The second day of Charlotte Street’s Grand Opening will feature exhibition programming that includes a beading workshop by Who We Were visual artist Jillian Youngbird at 10AM in the library (limited capacity, RSVP required), an open house beginning at 12PM, a film screening and musical performance by artists featured in Phainesthai at 12PM in the theater, and an outdoor dance improv – part of the Making Moves series – organized by past performing artist studio resident Kyle Mullins at 3PM in the courtyard. To RSVP and for additional COVID protocols and parking information, visit www.charlottestreet.org.
ABOUT WHO WE WERE, WHO WE ARE, WHO WE WILL BE
Within the identity of any singular person, there are multiplicities. There are various versions of ourselves to consider: past/present/future, self at best/self at worst, self as part of various communities. Experience, ancestry, and environment come together to define the internal and external worlds of an individual human. These artists explore aspects of their identities- as parts of a whole, and as whole universes in and of themselves.
Microsoft Word – Grand Opening PR FINAL.docx
Featured Artists: Max Adrian, Julie Farstad, Gonzalo Hernandez, Judith G. Levy, Jason Lips, Alexandra Robinson, Chico Sierra, Harold Smith, Sara Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin, Jillian Youngbird
ABOUT [PHAINESTHAI] Prairie Translations
Phainesthai is an aural/visual art exhibition that is the result of regional artists who worked experientially within the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve that is located at the geographical center of the United States and is considered one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world. It not only exists as a geological reality; it is also a place that is illuminated by the viewpoints of the people who give it meaning. The title refers to the revealing of truth beyond appearance.
The exhibition will be a screening of Cyan Meeks’ experiential non-verbal documentary film Phainesthai, (22- minutes) and the live performance of Susan Mayo’s Tallgrass Studies sound compositions by the Switchgrass String Quartet. The film addresses how geological and ecological memory can engage individual experience by the embodiment of place with human understanding and aspirations. The film includes the work of nationally known time-lapse artist Luke McKinney. The sound performance is an interpretation of the aural experience of the Flint Hills set within a musical composition in four movements: I Ornithology & Anemology (study of birds and the movements of wind), II Entomology (study of insects), III Agrostology (study of grasses) and IV Ethnochoreology (study of dance). Both works explore ideas surrounding representing and re-presenting documents of actuality to kindle an exchange between viewer and the ecosystem, fostering a personal sense of responsibility, awareness and inspired stewardship of this nationally significant geological site.
The work was produced in partnership with the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, the Tallgrass Artist Residency and in collaboration with Park Rangers Jeff Rundell, Heather Brown and Eric Patterson.
Featured Artists: Cyan Meeks, Luke McKinney, Switchgrass String Quartet (Ramiro Miranda – Violin I, Rob Loren – Violin II, Lillian Green – Viola, Susan Mayo – Cello)
ABOUT CHARLOTTE STREET
Charlotte Street identifies the needs and fuels the evolution of an ever-changing multidisciplinary arts ecosystem, acting as its primary provocateur. Charlotte Street cultivates the contemporary, the exceptional, and the unexpected in the practice of artists working in and engaging with the Kansas City art community. Since 1997, Charlotte Street has distributed over $1.1 million in awards and grants to artists and their innovative projects, and connected individual artists to each other and to the greater Kansas City community. For more information about Charlotte Street, its awards, programs, and initiatives, visit www.charlottestreet.org.
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You can read the press release in PDF format here.
