Artist Opportunities
Kansas City Flatfile
Originated in 2001 at the Artspace in conjunction with the Pierogi Flatfiles exhibition, brought to Kansas City from Joe Amrhein’s Brooklyn-based Pierogi Gallery, the Kansas City Flatfile is a unique biennial invitational exhibition featuring a large range of art work by emerging and established Kansas City artists. The Kansas City Flatfile includes 2-dimensionsional work in all media, including drawing, photography, prints, paintings and mixed media works on paper, all housed in individual portfolios enclosed in flatfile cabinets. Visitors are invited to browse the files and handle the work wearing white gloves, offering a unique and personal viewing experience. In addition, the exhibition includes a video file, featuring a variety of time-based work by Kansas City artists that viewers may select and watch at their leisure in a lounge-type setting.
Throughout the exhibition, guest curators from the Kansas City area and surrounding region are invited to curate temporary salon-style presentations in the gallery from the flatfiles. Within the context of a gallery exhibition, the Kansas City Flatfile has a studio-like characteristic for the participating artists and the public, encouraging a natural exchange of ideas and practices through a hands-on approach.
The Kansas City Flatfile is an opportunity for a wide-range of Kansas City artists to show their work to an equally wide-ranging audience, including arts professionals and collectors in the immediate area and beyond. Artists are invited to participate in this unique exhibition if they are on the Artspace’s Kansas City Artists Mailing List, which they will be included on after submitting to the Artspace Visiting Critic & Curator Program.
Visiting Critic & Curator Program
Initiated in 2000 with support from the Missouri Arts Council, the Visiting Critic & Curator Program (VCCP) is designed to engage Kansas City artists in a dialogue with nationally recognized curators and critics. Hosted on a biennial basis by the Artspace, the VCCP invites submissions, through an open call to artists, from all Kansas City artists and M.F.A. and B.F.A. candidates in their final year. By applying for this program, an artist is automatically added to the Artspace’s Kansas City Artist Mailing List, thus will receive an invitation to participate in the biennial exhibition, the Kansas City Flatfile, at the Artspace.
The VCCP invites a nationally recognized critic or curator – alternating either critic or curator for each program – to select a group of Kansas City artists for individual studio visits and discussions in Kansas City. The VCCP is uniquely beneficial for Kansas City artists by opening a dialogue with an individual from outside of the region while also exposing the visiting critic or curator to the dynamic contemporary art scene in Kansas City. Opportunities and exposure for KC artists outside of the region are a potential benefit of the VCCP. The program culminates with a public lecture by the visiting critic or curator, organized by the Artspace.
Previous visiting critics and curators include: Michael Pittari, former editor of Art Papers, based in Atlanta, GA; Amada Cruz, Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard; Kathryn Hixon, editor of New Art Examiner, formerly published in Chicago; Anne Pasternak, Director of Creative Time, New York, James Elaine, curator of Hammer Projects at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
