KCAI Gallery
The KCAI Gallery serves the mission of the Kansas City Art Institute through collaborative, curriculum-based engagements with students, faculty, community and artists in residence.
Our new campus gallery presents curatorial outcomes of these engagements that include exhibitions, screenings, lectures, readings, and conversations.
Other pages in this section:
KCAI GalleryAn experimental gallery in the heart of campus.
Launched in 2016 in the Crossroads District and relocated to the Tony Jones Studios on the main campus, this new site and related programs hold space for critical thought, reflection, and dialog about current social issues and global challenges in our world.
The KCAI Gallery works closely with all departments and explore new community partnerships. Our prime location will help facilitate a collaborative, integrated space for KCAI students and offer the public a new destination nestled between the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and the Artspace.
Collected Possibilities: Eight Dream Exhibitions
August 2 – 9, 2026
Dreams are assembled from fragments of experience; images, places, objects, conversations, and memories gathered from different moments in time. Within dreams, these fragments are reorganized into new and unexpected relationships. A familiar object may appear in an unfamiliar setting—separate experiences may merge into a single image. Through these shifts and associations, new meanings emerge.
This exhibition approaches curating as a process of collecting possibilities. Like dreams, exhibitions bring together separate elements and create new relationships between artworks, ideas, histories, and contexts. Rather than simply presenting existing objects, contemporary curators construct frameworks through which new connections and interpretations take shape.
Image: from Rafaela Brosnan, You Can Never Go Back
Thérèse Lahaie: Seeds Orbit
Part I: February 25 – March 15, 2026
Part II: May 30 – August 9, 2026
As an open-water swimmer in the San Francisco Bay, Thérèse Lahaie’s practice is deeply attuned to the rhythms of the tides, the arc of the sun, and the delicate survival of seabirds in a changing climate.
This exhibition, developed in conjunction with her residency as a visiting artist at KCAI, presents the movement of photons from the core of the sun to the walls of the gallery through light-based phenomena, kinetic sculpture, and camera-less photography.
Image: Thérèse Lahaie, Cloudbirds, video projection
Exhibitions
KCAI Gallery connects acclaimed artists with faculty and students to produce exhibitions that can only be seen at KCAI.
Contact + Visit
KCAI Gallery is open to the public during regular hours or by appointment
Annual BFA Exhibition
Student information and resources for submitting to the Annual BFA Exhibition
Art+Design Labs
KCAI's community education program offers hands-on classes, expert faculty, and access to world-class art and design facilities.