This exhibition transforms the Tomahawk Ridge Community Center into a vibrant exploration of contemporary impressionism, showcasing the signature style that has made artist Mike Savage a staple of the Kansas City art scene for over two decades. Known for his "joyful and energetic" approach, Savage utilizes bold, spontaneous brushstrokes and a vivid acrylic palette to elevate everyday scenes—from local landmarks like the Country Club Plaza to nostalgic landscapes inspired by his childhood—into works that feel both accessible and uplifting.

Come view the new installation at Prairie Village City Hall's R.G. Endres Gallery. This exhibition features artists Paul McMillian and DJ Matheny.

Join us for the FREE opening night reception on Thursday, April 2 from 7 – 8:30 pm. Enjoy complimentary appetizers and drinks and view fine art in a beautiful setting.

The JCPRD Fine Arts department & the Arts Council of Johnson County have jointly curated an exhibit of artwork by local artists reflecting on both the United States and democracy

As the United States approaches its Semiquincentennial, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, local artists were invited to imagine the future of our founding ideals.

This exhibition features artworks that explore how these concepts might evolve amid shifting technologies, climates, cultures, and communities.

Come view the new installation at Meadowbrook Park Clubhouse. This exhibition features artists Paul McMillian and DJ Matheny through 5/8, then Paul McMillian solo.

The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art is proud to host Angeline Rivas’s first institutional solo exhibition. Painted with airbrush on wood panel and canvas, the works of Angeline Rivas are vast, yet compact crucibles of a unique form of western Americana. Unlike typical airbrush paintings, Rivas’s works have a way of disclosing, as opposed to effacing, facture via imperfections, pieces of tape, and small moments of graffiti, making it such that the work has carved out a singular space for itself both on a formal and a conceptual level. Rivas (b. 1981) was born and raised in Kansas City, MO and is now based in Los Angeles, CA. Rivas earned her MFA in 2022 from the ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA and her BFA in 2005 from Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA. Read the full essay about Rivas's work, written by Christina Catherine Martinez, artist writer, and comedian.

The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art is proud to present Michael Brantley’s first institutional solo exhibition. Guest curated by artist Harold Smith, Visionary will feature the elegant and sophisticated work of painter Michael Brantley, a master painter whose stunning work and practice compellingly encapsulates the love, fears, hopes, and dreams within the Black experience.

Whether he is painting a vibrant jazz singer, an emotionally stirring protest scene, or a reflective portrait, Brantley’s work is saturated with humanity, illuminating his dynamic, refined, and painterly approach. This exhibition will feature the artist's most recent work as well as some earlier pieces, giving the viewer a sweeping synopsis of Brantley's enlightening artistic practice.

Michael Brantley (b. 1970) is a multi-disciplinary figurative artist living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. Using oil paint as his preferred medium, his work reflects and celebrates the lifestyle, heritage, and culture of American Africans. Brantley’s art inspires, informs, and provokes dialogue. His large-scale monochromatic paintings in the jazz aesthetic have been spotlighted by the NFL and exhibited at the American Jazz Museum and at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

Read the full essay about Brantley's work, written by guest curator Harold Smith.

For fifty years, American artist Linda Lighton (b. 1948) has created a powerful body of subversive ceramic sculptures that explore desire in all its complex forms. Her work uses wit and seduction as conceptual weaponry to mine the relationships between sex, power, and politics.

The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art is proud to present Linda Lighton: Love & War, a major retrospective exhibition that examines the arc of Lighton’s career, guest curated by Sydney Stutterheim, PhD, with curatorial assistance from Rose Dergan. It is accompanied by a 208-page book, published and internationally distributed by Hirmer. This richly illustrated monograph gives a comprehensive overview of her pioneering body of work, which pushes the boundaries of ceramic sculpture.

As a Kansas City native, Lighton offers a perspective on the American cultural landscape from the country’s center—an important distinction from the predominantly coastal focus in art discourses. Her work addresses universal experiences, yet her life story tells a unique narrative of rebellion and activism. Particularly, Lighton challenges long-standing expectations for women, exploring gender inequality concerns alongside her commitment to continuing the conversation around gun violence and environmental degradation. As the first-ever major museum survey of her work, Love & War highlights this singular artist’s continued insistence on the joyousness of life amidst social and political struggles.

Born into an affluent Midwestern family, Lighton could have taken the straightforward route and followed her father’s ambitions for her to marry well and become a housewife—a continuation of social ideals from an earlier generation. Instead, Lighton rejected this trajectory, insisting on her own desire to become an artist. When this was met with refusal, she left home, helped publish a leftist newspaper, got married, had a child, joined a commune on a Native American reservation in Washington State, where she lived without running water or electricity, and built an eight-sided log cabin by hand—all before the age of 25.

Linda Lighton lives and works in Kansas City, Missouri. She has exhibited her ceramic sculptures nationally and internationally since 1979. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, KC, MO; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, KC, MO; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; Kansas City Museum, KC, KS; Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona, CA; Icheon World Ceramics Center, Icheon, Korea; FuLe International Ceramic Art Museum, the American Museum, Fuping, China; International Ceramic Museum, Kecskemet, Hungary; Latvian National Museum, Riga, Latvia; Jiesia Bone China Museum, Kaunas, Lithuania; Ariana Museum, Geneva, Switzerland; and the International Academy of Ceramics, Geneva, Switzerland, among others.

The stories adapted from European folktales often feature a desire for riches, status, and romance. In comparison, Indigenous stories highlight relations to other beings. In accordance with the Indigenous imperative to see the land, animals, and other living beings represented, Julie Buffalohead’s work exhibits a rematriated approach to storytelling, grounded in Indigenous values and depicting love for beings beyond oneself.

A citizen of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, Julie Buffalohead (b. 1972) creates visual narratives that center Native storytelling. Stories of Becoming features a new series by Buffalohead that incorporates animals of Indigenous stories alongside the often contradictory stories from European folklore to reenvision the teachings imposed on youth and within our communities. Alongside these visual stories, Buffalohead engages with images of contemporary femininity and youth, representing traditional and modern protectors and leaders.

As parents alter and update the stories passed on to children, Buffalohead recenters the stories Indigenous communities need to hold onto—the ones that tell of the spirits and safeguards still present within contemporary life, the ones that serve as reminders to care for community, and the stories of pain that established Indigenous histories of resiliency. Within Stories of Becoming, Buffalohead grounds her depictions in space and a more defined landscape, materializing the reality, authenticity, and validity of Indigenous stories while still leaving room for humor.

Buffalohead received her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis, MN and her MFA from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, and Guggenheim Fellowship.

—Kendra R. Greendeer, Ph.D., Ho-Chunk and Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, Ihlenfeld Curator of Collaborative and Community Exhibitions, Weisman Art Museum

MUSEUM HOURSFREE ADMISSIONTue., Fri., Sat.: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.Wed., Thu.: 10 a.m.-8 p.m.Sun.: noon-5 p.m.Mon. and JCCC Holidays: Closed

Upcoming JCCC Holidays:Memorial Day: May 25, 2026Juneteenth: June 19, 2026Independence Day: July 3-5, 2026

Co-directed by the Wyandot Nation of Kansas and Monumenta, in collaboration with lead artists Omakyehstih Collective, Trespassers Beware! Fort Conley and Wyandot Women Warriors is a mobile monument that illuminates the story of the Wyandot Conley sisters who occupied their family's cemetery in Kansas City, Kansas to save it from urban development. While physically defending the burials, Lyda Conley took their fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and became the first Indigenous woman to argue a case before the highest court in the land. The monument reimagines Fort Conley, the small dwelling the sisters built inside the Wyandot National Burying Ground and inhabited for years to defend their family’s graves. Their decades-long activism and legal arguments protected this sacred land, impacting preservation and tribal sovereignty movements.

This multimedia installation is based on a replica of the historic fort and incorporates video, music, writing, interpretation, oral histories, an original performance, and more to share the story.

Trespassers Beware! is generously funded by the National Endowment for the Arts/ArtsHERE, in partnership with Mid-America Arts Alliance, the Mellon Foundation, Humanities Kansas, Kansas Studies Institute, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College, the Wyandot Nation of Kansas, the Kansas Arts Commission and individual donors.

MUSEUM HOURSFREE ADMISSIONTue., Fri., Sat.: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.Wed., Thu.: 10 a.m.-8 p.m.Sun.: noon-5 p.m.Mon. and JCCC Holidays: Closed

Created in 1997 by Chairman Emeritus Robert Endres, a then member of the Board for the Arts and Humanities Association of Johnson County, the Shooting Stars Program is one of a few initiatives in the community to honor high school students and their arts educators for artistic excellence in the literary, performing, and visual arts through recognition, scholarships, and awards.

With the help of generous contributors and program partners including Johnson County Community College, the Midwest Trust Center, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Arts Ambassadors and the dedicated board, staff, and volunteers of the Arts Council of Johnson County, the program continues to grow. Since its creation, the Shooting Stars Program has recognized over 1,000 high school seniors and awarded more than $400,000 in college scholarships and $70,000 in teacher awards.

To participate in the program, twelfth grade students must be nominated by their high school arts teacher and be a resident of Johnson County, Kansas. Once nominated, finalists then audition or submit a portfolio of work for review by independent judges. All participating teachers and students are honored, and scholarship recipients are announced at the Annual Shooting Stars Gala in spring.

This year, the students honored in the Shooting Stars Program represent a range of local schools and school districts, with nominations coming from the Blue Valley, De Soto, Gardner-Edgerton, Mill Valley, Olathe, Shawnee Mission, and Spring Hill School districts as well as The Barstow School, Heritage Christian Academy, Kansas City Christian High School, Notre Dame De Sion, Saint James Academy, and Saint Thomas Aquinas High School.

MUSEUM HOURSFREE ADMISSION Tue., Fri., Sat.: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed., Thu.: 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Sun.: noon-5 p.m. Mon. and JCCC Holidays: Closed

More than 100 beautiful quilts will be on display, hand-made by our members. We’ve been working hard all year to complete these works of art for you to enjoy. We’re excited to share them with you.

In addition to the quilts on display, come and enjoy:

Unique vendors — Hundreds of items to browse. Handmade gift items available in our “Yard Sale.” Homemade goodies available at our bake sale. Door prize drawings several times each day. Be inspired by fellow crafters!

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Come write with Writers in Residence! We are a Roaming Free writers group that pops up around the KC Metro to meet writers in their own neighborhoods. On fourth Friday's we take up residence in InterUrban ArtHouse for a three hour write in, help support writers with encouragement, advise, and support.

Interested in future events? Check out our Facebook Community Group. 

With songs like "Cracklin' Rosie," “America," and "Sweet Caroline,” Neil Diamond sold over 100 million records worldwide with music that became the soundtrack to one generation after another with hits spanning five decades. As a Tin Pan Alley song writer in the mid-60s, he penned songs recorded by everyone from Elvis Presley to Deep Purple and, of course, the Monkee’s classic, “I’m A Believer.”

Matt Vee along with cousins Jeff and Tommy Vee, music veterans and sons of the legendary Bobby Vee, join forces with their family and friends as The Killer Vees to celebrate the music from a timeless catalog.

The Park University International Center for Music’s 2025-26 concert season continues on Friday, April 24, with an esteemed lineup of ICM students under the tutelage of its string studio faculty. The concert will take place at the 1900 Building in Mission Woods, Kan., starting at 7:30 p.m.Park ICM students who train with violinist Ben Sayevich, cellist Daniel Veis and violist Chung-Hoon Peter Chun will take the stage to present a diverse and rich program, showcasing the broad spectrum and emotional depth of compositions written for string instruments.The program for the evening is scheduled to include the following selections and students:

Violin Sonata No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 105, composed by Robert Schumann, performed by violinist Yuren Zhang, graduate student pursuing graduate artist diploma in music performance (and earned graduate certificate in music performance in 2025), and accompanied by pianist Lolita Lisovskaya-Sayevich, director of collaborative piano
Lament for Two Violas, composed by Frank Bridge, performed by violist Victor Diaz, graduate student pursuing Master of Music degree in string performance (and earned graduate certificate in music performance in 2023), and violist Iana Korzukhina, graduate student pursuing Master of Music degree in string performance
Carmen Fantasie, composed by Franz Waxman, performed by violinist Yin-Shiuan Ting, senior music performance/strings major, and accompanied by Lisovskaya-Sayevich
Armadura (for solo cello), composed by Andrea Casarrubios, performed by cellist Abdumardon Abdurakhmonov, senior music performance/strings major
Recitativo and Scherzo, Op. 6, for Solo Violin, composed by Fritz Kreisler, performed by violinist David Brill, graduate student pursuing graduate certificate in music performance/strings
Violin Sonata No. 7 in C Minor, composed by Ludwig van Beethoven, performed by violinist Aviv Daniel, senior music performance/strings major, and accompanied by Lisovskaya-Sayevich
Eight Pieces for Violin and Cello, Op. 39, composed by Reinhold Glière, performed by violinist Mumin Turgunov, graduate student pursuing Master of Music degree in music performance (and earned Bachelor of Music degree in music performance in 2025), and cellist Diyorbek Nortojiev, graduate student pursuing graduate certificate in music performance (and earned a Bachelor of Music degree in music performance in 2024)
Introduction et Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 28, composed by Camille Saint-Saëns, performed by violinist Noello Naito, graduate student pursuing graduate certificate in music performance, and accompanied by Lisovskaya-Sayevich

Tickets for the concert are $30 for the general public and $10 for students (not including fees), and are available to purchase in advance through Eventbrite. For more information, visit icm.park.edu/1900-string-studios-march-2026.

This speaker series is available for all ages and takes place in the Oak Room, at Leawood City Hall. The events start at 10 a.m.

April 25: "Creating the Declaration of Independence" by April Bishop

May 30: "The Hard Part Begins, Inventing an American Nation After Independence" by Mitch Lohr

June 27: "The American Revolutionary War in the West" by Stephen L. Kling Jr.

July 25: "Women's Role in the Revolutionary War" by Denise Bullock

This nationally acclaimed ensemble has captivated audiences around the country with its expressive music and engaging style. Experience the sound of Rezound! at one of our spring concerts.

2025-2026 Concert Series

Get ready for an unforgettable evening of music that honors the rich legacy of Jewish Big Band leaders and musicians in the golden era of swing and Big Band jazz. “It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That … Sving” celebrates the contributions of Jewish composers and bandleaders and highlights the sounds that defined a generation. With a repertoire full of timeless hits, the performance will feature iconic tunes by legendary artists, including Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Willie Smith.

Under the leadership of Ron Ernst, the Moonlight Serenade Orchestra of Kansas City will bring these beloved classics to life. The orchestra will transport the audience back to the days when Big Band music filled the airwaves, dance floors, and ballrooms. The show will dive deep into the music of Jewish composers who helped shape the sound of swing.

This celebration is a tribute to the cultural heritage of Jewish musicians and the enduring influence they've had on American music. The blend of intricate melodies, foot-tapping rhythms, and lush brass harmonies will make this a night to remember, honoring the legacy of these musical pioneers while introducing their contributions to new generations of jazz enthusiasts. Whether you're a long-time fan of Big Band jazz or a newcomer to the genre, this performance promises to be a captivating experience that underscores the intersection of cultural heritage and musical innovation.

Celebrate the nation's 250th anniversary with a powerful musical journey through American history. The American Songbook weaves together the rich tapestry of our musical heritage, from humble Shaker melodies to bold contemporary works. Experience masterpieces by America's greatest composers, including Copland's stirring Americana, Bernstein's theatrical brilliance, Gershwin's jazz-infused genius, and Barber's profound lyricism. The program also spotlights today's visionary voices, featuring works by acclaimed composers Morten Lauridsen, Adolphus Hailstork, Rosephanye Powell, Reena Esmail, and more. Come hear the music that shaped 250 years of American spirit through song.

Enjoy an evening of live music at Olathe Live! Lake Nights in the outdoor amphitheater overlooking Lake Olathe. Bring a picnic, lawn chairs, or a blanket and relax to the sounds of the Olathe Civic Jazz Band.

Rain or shine event- the concert will move indoors to the adjacent Eagles Landing Event Space if there is inclement weather. Admission is free, making it a perfect summer evening for friends and family.

While you're here, be sure to explore all that Lake Olathe has to offer! The park features a 170-acre lake and 258 acres of park space with a swim beach and marina, spray ground, playgrounds, disc golf course, and more. The park is open daily from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

The Park University International Center for Music’s 2025-26 concert season will come to a conclusion on Friday, May 1, as international superstar pianist and 2013 Park ICM graduate Behzod Abduraimov performs at the 1900 Building in Mission Woods, Kan., starting at 7:30 p.m.

Described by The New York Times as the “master of all he surveys,” Abduraimov’s captivating performances continue to receive international praise. Abduraimov, who serves as the Park ICM artist-in-residence, won the London International Piano Competition in 2009 just two years after beginning his studies under Park ICM artistic director and internationally acclaimed pianist Stanislav Ioudenitch.

Following his professional debut success at Carnegie Hall in 2015, Abduraimov has had a meteoric rise to stardom in the classical music world, performing with leading orchestras worldwide. Abduraimov’s critically acclaimed recordings have won numerous international awards including the Choc de Classica and Diapason Découverte. “Shadows of My Ancestors,” his second recital recording for Alpha Classics released in January 2024, was recognized as a Gramophone Editor’s Choice, shortlisted for a Gramophone Award, and named one of Apple Music’s ​“10 Classical Albums You Must Hear This Month.” In 2020, two of his albums were nominated for the 2020 Opus Klassik awards in multiple categories.Abduraimov is scheduled to perform the following program:

Four Pieces for Piano, Op. 119 (Klavierstücke), composed by Johannes Brahms Variations on a Theme by Rode, Op. 33, composed by Carl Czerny Dante Sonata (Après une lecture du Dante, Fantasia quasi sonata), composed by Franz List Suite Bergamasque, composed by Claude Debussy Three movements from Petrushka (Trois mouvements de Petrouchka), composed by Igor Stravinsky

Tickets for the concert are $30 for the general public and $10 for students (not including fees), and are available in advance through Eventbrite. For more information, visit icm.park.edu/1900-abduraimov-may-2026.