Central Library

This poster celebrates the 150th anniversary of the City Market in Kansas City, Missouri, in 2007. Historic photographs provided by the Missouri Valley Special Collections overlap one another in a muted primary color palette to create a visually alluring rustic collage. The City Market has evolved over the years but ha...

The American Library Association (ALA) started an "Read" poster initiative in 1985, featuring a celebrity posing with their favorite book or books. The celebrities were chosen because of their popularity, appeal, and visibility to a general audience, and the ALA worked to feature a range of diverse talent who would be...

This poster markets "The Outwin: American Portraiture Today", an exhibition held by the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art from October 5th, 2017 to January 7th, 2018. Every three years, The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery hosts The Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, which calls on artists across the country t...

This antique piece houses a radio-receiver in a four-legged highboy with a stretcher base. The central cabinet doors slide outward to reveal the face of the radio covered by a decorative panel with flourishing scrollwork pressed into veneer-faced plywood. The radio dial peeks through a narrowing viewfinder outfitted wi...

The Steinway & Sons Model L is among the larger sized Steinway ‘baby grands’. The Steinway Model L scale design is based very closely on its predecessor the Model O. The Model L with its square tail, was designed to replace the same-size Model O which featured a rounded tail. The cast iron plate and soundboard conform...

What at first appears to be an abstract art installation in the Library’s technology and digital engagement hub is in fact, something deeply conceptual and highly interactive. White Matter Fibers: Inside the Brain is situated in ONE NORTH, the Central Library branch technology center. At first observation, the viewer l...

Refe and Susan Tuma are parents of four from the Kansas City area. Inspired by the imagined lives of their children's' toy dinosaurs, they began a series of children's books documenting the antics of dinosaurs in various situations, producing titles such as "What the Dinosaurs Did Last Night" and "What the Dinosaurs Di...

Thomas Hart Benton was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. His paintings portrayed a fluid motion to both landscape and sculpted figures, capturing every day scenes in his North American visual narratives. Benton was born on 1889 in Neosho, Missouri, and spent much of his adolescence in this state. These...

This pennant commemorates the First National Bank of Kansas City. Established in 1886 by Col. James Abernathy and James Lombard, the First National Bank was eventually housed in the building now utilized by the Kansas City Public Library's Central Branch. The Library pays homage to much of the Bank's original features...

Orval Hixon used this large format sliding carriage studio camera from the 1920s through the later years of his career in Lawrence, Kansas during the 1960s and 1970s. This camera produced 8 x 10 inch negatives, and Hixon used it to photograph local clientele for weddings, graduations, and other important occasions. It...