Many years ago, I was on the Missouri Arts Council, a nonprofit that supports the arts in our state, and I always felt there was a distinct rivalry between St. Louis and Kansas City when it came to the arts. I wasn’t sure if it was just my impression, so I did a lot of Googling and research to see what I could find.
More comparison than competition
What I found is that the relationship between the arts scenes in St. Louis and Kansas City is less a direct rivalry and more a long-running comparison, shaped by different histories, funding models and cultural identities. Still, there is definitely a sense of competition, especially when it comes to visibility, philanthropy and national reputation.
St. Louis is the larger and older city, with major, long-established institutions like the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, the Contemporary Art Museum and the St. Louis Symphony. It has a strong tradition of philanthropy and legacy wealth, and its arts scene is often seen as being more museum-driven and academically connected.
Kansas City also has major institutions like the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, but its reputation leans more toward a decentralized, artist-driven scene.
In a way, St. Louis competes on prestige, scale and critical discourse, while Kansas City competes on experience, livability and grassroots creativity.
A magazine that inspired a road trip
My friend Gregory Glore, who is originally from St. Louis but lived in Kansas City for many years, gave me a copy of KC Studio magazine, whose tagline is “all arts, all the time.” Reading it convinced me to get in the car and take a road trip to visit our friends to the west. Kansas City deserves a big cheer from St. Louis.
In one recent issue of this very informative arts magazine was a several-page article on St. Louis’ recent blockbuster exhibit at SLAM, “Anselm Kiefer: Becoming the Sea.”
That got me thinking it was time for us to shine a light on some of the exciting art happenings that have taken place—or are coming—to Kansas City. I also want to point out the many connections the two cities have shared, both now and in the past.
Shared artists and shared history
Ralph T. Coe, a former director of the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, curated an exhibition of Northwest Coast Native American Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum many years ago. I was a mere docent then, but I still remember his sensitivity and his remarkable ability to see art from a global perspective. The Nelson-Atkins recently announced a gift of 181 works from the Ralph T. Coe Center for the Arts in Santa Fe, N.M.
Composer Kevin Puts, a Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winner, performed with Prairie Village native Joyce DiDonato as part of the Harriman-Jewell Series. More recently, I heard one of Puts’ compositions performed by the St. Louis Symphony and saw an Alvin Ailey performance presented by Dance St. Louis. In other words, both cities have remarkably good cultural taste.
Different stages, similar missions
Two relatively new small theater venues are K.C. Melting Pot Theatre and Cameron Jamarr’s Soul City Playhouse in St. Louis. Melting Pot fills an important need by nurturing Black talent and telling African American stories in new and interesting ways while reflecting the universal human experience.
Soul City Playhouse, whose motto is “empathy from stage to street,” is a social outreach theater built on a philosophy of service, education, activism and training. It was founded with the intention of challenging the role and responsibility of the arts in society.
Again, the missions of both companies are remarkably similar.
From wrestling rings to museum galleries
But the article in the K.C. arts magazine that really caught my attention was entitled “Wrestling as Performance Art” by Harold Smith. He writes, “While usually considered a form of sport, professional wrestling can be viewed as performance art being both visual and dramatic, with its own vernacular and creative strategies.”
That took me back to my childhood, when I watched “Wrestling at the Chase” in St. Louis and remember my grandma screaming and cheering for our hero, Lou Thesz.
So is there really a rivalry?
So—is it really competition?
Artists, curators and funders often move between the two cities. Each city defines itself, at least in part, in contrast to the other. Together, they form a kind of bi-city cultural system in Missouri.
