KCAI Blogs

The  KCAI Library has its origins in a gift of 800+ books donated in 1924 by Mrs. John F. Downing.  KCAI still retains many of those books, including Chats on English China, its first acquisition.

Accession books, the traditional method of keeping track of library acquisitions show a wealth of information about the Library’s early collection.

Over the years, the library moved with the school and was for many years in the lower level of the Dorm Building, which now houses the Art Store.
In March of 2002 the new Jannes Library opened its doors.  Named for alumnus and former board member Nicolas Jannes, it was through his generosity, as well as that of other donors that the library was built.  It stands in a remodeled and expanded Georgian mansion on the southern end of campus and contains all the library’s collections, two computer labs for student use and also houses the campus Academic Resource Center.

Robert Stillwell (’51 sculpture)

I have many fond memories of KCAI, especially my sculpture instructor Clark Winter. I am now 85 and still painting and sculpting. I was a friend of Robert Rauchenburg’s while we were students at KCAI.

Gary A. Yarrington (’58 sculpture)

John Olsen (’65 sculpture)

Give us three words you would use to describe your time at the Art Institute (and why) :

Expensive: It cost over $700 a year. The Junior College I started at only cost $180. Exciting:I had never been on my own before. Educational: I had to sleep in a room with Ralph and Cindy.

The professor or course that most affected your work (and why):

Eldred: Dale changed my life and our friendship continued for many years.

The most important thing a faculty member ever said to you and under what circumstances it was said:

It was not what they said, it was what they did. They all made great art and their art spoke for them.

The best class or project you ever participated in:

1.Sculpture 2.Painting 3.Industural Design I enjoyed them all in that order.

The course was the most challenging and why:

Sculpture: We made a lot of mistakes. Burnouts were never hot or long enough. Molds blew up once in a while. Now thats a challenge.

One lesson that you learned at KCAI that still guides your career:

It is not what you think; it is not what you say; it is what you do that counts.

Tell us which classmates were your best friends and how you’ve kept in touch since college:

Steve Dubov, Zolton Popovits, Carl Floyd,Carl Ponca, Reilly Rhodes,Jim Enyeart and many more.  Unfortunately I have not kept in touch.

Your college sweetheart:

Jane, I married her while still at KCAI. While at Tulane we had two children. And two years later had another one. That may help to explain why I have not kept up with my  college friends.

Favorite hang-out on-campus:

Sculpture studio. We always worked late into the night.

The craziest thing you did while at KCAI:

My roommate (who shall remain anonymous because I am not sure what the statures of limitations are in Missouri) and I needed canvas for a painting to decorate our new apartment. My roommate knew that the music conservatory had some old stage props that they were not using. As we started over that night to appropriate one, it started to snow. We continued, thinking that it would give us cover. After the appropriation, as we approached our doorsteps, we realized what idiots we were. We had left a trail in the fresh snow that led from the conservatory to the door of our apartment. We spent the rest of the night running around in the snow trying to cover our trail.

The funniest experience at KCAI :

The house painting and goat roast at Stan Edmister’s. And, listening to Bob Dylan’s first album at Danny Christensen’s house.

Tell us about the moment that you truly knew that you were an artist/designer:

While at the Art Institue I entered one of my sculptures in a show at the Springfield,MO.Art Museum. It was accepted. I was accepted.

One moment here at KCAI that you will remember for the rest of your life:

While cleaning out the attic of the old painting studio building I found a Jackson Pollock drawing. Bill Paul would not let me keep it. I hope KCAI still has it.

The hardest lesson:

The life of art is in the struggle. When the struggle ends art dies.

Other special memories:

At the Beau Arts Ball in 1964, I dressed as a soldier using “war toys” I found in the toy stores. Jane dressed as a “Peace-nic” and carried a sign saying “Band the Bomb”. We won a best costume prize. Little did we know then that the Viet Nam War was just around the corner.

Sarah Biondo (’67 sculpture)

Seal created by a KCAI faculty member for the city. Designer: John Baker, 1970. Kansas City residents will recognize the center figure as gracing many of the city's manhole covers.

“Kansas City may seem an unlikely site for a revolution, but it was there, in the late 1960s, that a group of Swiss designers forever changed the way graphic design was taught in the United States.”  The quote is from “Bits and Pieces of Basel,” an article by Katherine McCoy that appeared in Print magazine’s March/April 2005 issue.  McCoy makes the case that KCAI offered “the first comprehensive graphic design curriculum for undergraduates and the first full-time, Swiss-trained faculty in the U. S.”  Rob Roy Kelly, the graphic design program chair, possessed a vision for transforming graphic design education.  Faculty members recruited by Kelly include Gordon Salchow (arriving in 1966) and the Swiss designers Inge Druckrey and Hans Allemann (arriving in 1966 and ’67, respectively).

Cover of KCAI Catalog, 1968. Designer: Hans Allemann.

Armin Hofmann of Basel’s Kunstgewerbeschule fame was a pivotal influence on the developing graphic design program.  As McCoy recounts, Druckrey and Allemann adapted to teaching in the U.S. by experimenting, inventing the necessary vocabulary, and spending time with students in their studios as student projects developed.  In Alleman’s phrasing, the Swiss faculty members developed sequential projects, building on “bits and pieces of Basel.”

Katherine McCoy is the Joyce C. Hall Distinguished Professor of Design at KCAI.

Symbol designed for the Kansas City Zoo, Gerald Haworth, designer (1969).

Andrew Morgan, artist and chairman of the art department at the University of Mississippi, became president of KCAI in the fall of 1960 and within two months presented to the board an ambitious 10-year program.

During the first three years of Morgan’s presidency, the growth of KCAI was substantial. In June 1962 the board authorized Kivett and Myers to develop a Student Living Center. A loan of $820,000 was secured from the Federal Housing and Home Finance Agency. One wing of the twin building would accommodate 80 men, the other 84 women. A joint lounge and cafeteria connected the wings, and the building included a greatly expanded library and the Charlotte Crosby Kemper Gallery, which afforded space for an increased scope of exhibitions and attendance.

Charlotte Crosby Kemper Gallery in the Student Living Center

President Morgan also raised admissions and academic standards for the school whereby all entering students were screened, each required to appear in person for a faculty interview and to take a college qualification exam. After 1960, all students who entered on a full-time four-year basis as candidates for the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree were required to complete 136 hours for graduation, with 30 of these hours needed in general studies.

In 1963, Walt Disney was brought back to the place he once called home for an honorary degree and to relive some old and valuable memories. Disney, who stated, “I owe my formative knowledge to the Kansas City Art Institute,” toured Vanderslice Hall, visited the painting studios in Epperson House and spent time in an industrial design classroom talking with students and faculty.

Walt Disney accompanied by President Andrew Morgan and Earle Radford

In April 1964, the Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design became fully accredited, one of the 470 member schools of the North Central Association, its credits exchangeable with these colleges and universities and all other major educational institutions in the country. The Institute became one of only 27 art schools and colleges in the United States with both professional and college accreditation. The approval was made retroactive to 1960 so that the graduates of the class of 1964 would receive the accredited degree.
President Morgan called this action “the most important milestone in the school’s history” and pointed out that this would likely result in an accelerated program of expansion at the Art Institute. In addition, the college would also now be eligible for both state and federal grants for capital improvements. The Kansas City Star editorialized on June 28, 1964: “It was, in short, one of the most eventful years in the 79-year history of the school. It may someday be looked back on as the year the Art Institute came of age.”

The school also reformed its curriculum, narrowing its majors down to five: ceramics, sculpture, graphic design, industrial design and painting and printmaking. The foundation department reorganized and centralized its faculty under Samia Haleby, then Richard Mattsson, pioneering the first program of its kind for art schools in America. At the same time, the liberal arts department, under George Burris, became an enlarged, strengthened and autonomous entity within the school and was now considered an integral and vital part of the educational experience. In 1966, the name of the college was shortened from “Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design” to “Kansas City Art Institute.”

Liberal arts class discussion on the lawn

When Andrew Morgan announced in the fall that he was leaving the Institute in the spring of 1970 to go back to teaching, the school was radically changed from the institution he had found just 10 years before. Full-time enrollment had since doubled to 547, with 41 full-time faculty members and an average salary of more than $9,000. Library volumes now totaled more than 17,000, with 19,000 slides in the collection. The annual operating budget was $1,467,572; annual gifts and grants came to $750,000. With the completion of a $1 million building program in 1970, the size of the physical plant had also doubled from what it had been just 10 years before.

Upon leaving Kansas City, Morgan exhibited justifiable pride in the institution he did so much in developing. “Today’s campus is recognized to be one of the finest enjoyed by art students in the United States,” he told a reporter for The Kansas City Star. “Our faculty has grown with the facilities. They are widely known for educational innovation and creative skill. I believe that our students are among the most vigorous and visually talented to be found anywhere.”

Edited from “Chapter IV: The Vision of Andrew W. Morgan, the 1960s” in “The History of the Kansas City Art Institute: A Century of Excellence and Beyond,” by Milton S. Katz.

The 1950s were a time of great change at the Art Institute.   By February of 1950 enrollment reached a total of 1,000 day and evening students, and the school boasted a staff of 26 full time professors, 24 part time instructors and seven graduate students.

The boom was not to last however and with the graduation of students brought by the GI Bill and the Korean War, enrollment dropped significantly and previous financial woes returned.

Despite these problems, there were significant achievements during this period.  The school’s new buildings were featured in six different architectural magazines, and for the first time an Art Institute representative was invited by the Kansas City high schools to participate in the annual College Day program.  In 1951 KCAI qualified for listing in the Directory of Higher Educational Institutions.  In 1958 KCAI received formal accreditation from the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, and in 1959 the college celebrated its 75th Anniversary.  There were parties, tours of the campus and exhibitions, including Walt Disney’s “Art In Animation.” By the close of the decade it was clear that KCAI had entered the national stage in art education.

Beaux Arts has been a fixture of KCAI life. Since early in the college days it has been an opportunity for students, faculty and community members to get together, celebrate art and life and to have a good time.

Beaux Arts was featured in Life Magazine’s “Life goes to a Party” in 1938. Thomas Hart Benton, John Stuert Curry and Grant Wood were the judges of the costume contest. The theme for that year’s Beaux Arts was Arabian Nights – A Night in Baghdad.

These photos represent various Beaux Arts from the mid 1980s.

I did not have enough money to attend full time. I thought I might be able to enroll in some night courses and work during the day to pay for them.

The Kansas City Art Institute reviewed my portfolio and offered me a scholarship and a work job so I could attend full time. That was the start of my career in the visual world.

Any school is only as good as its teachers and I had the best with Rob Roy Kelly, and Lloyd Schnell along with the rest of his great staff.

Those two men opened my eyes to the possibilities and the challenges out there in the visual world of graphics and photography.

We had real assignments, designing the city logo, working with the city police on crime alert, working with teachers from local grade schools, projects that allowed us to interact with real people on how to solve problems. Kelly brought in art directors from other cities to give us assignments and to critique out work. We were exposed to a slice of the real world. Kelly had us work seven days a week and during the holidays no time off, I remember him saying “this is the way it is in the real world, deadlines take no vacation.”

Kelly and his staff were tough, I remember during critiques he and his staff would walk up and down in front of our work, (work that we had slaved over for days and sometime weeks) and when he would come to one he did not approve of, not worthy of any comment, he would rip it off the wall and throw it on the floor. Some of the younger students were in tears. “It’s brutal in the real world,” he would say, and he was right. I did get to visit Kelly once after school in Arizona, we had fun reminiscing the past.

Schnell was the one responsible for teaching me to see and so my career in photography was started. He has been a good friend over the years.

Most students in our group had that love hate relationship with Kelly, we hated the long hours but love the results. His staff expected perfection with no excuses.

Anybody that attended the KCAI under Kelly and his staff during those years came away with the knowledge and the toughness to make it in the real world, the foundation and the encouragement need to be successful.

Other special memory:

In Victor’s Junior Design Team of 10, six of us had flown on the Concorde.

“Thinking Photography: Five Decades at the Kansas City Art Institute, ” an exhibition at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art that features photographic works by twenty-seven notable Kansas City Art Institute alumni, will be on view July 24, 2010 – January 2, 2011.  The exhibit acknowledges the rich, diverse history of the KCAI photography program from the 1960s to the present day.  Work from the following artists will be included:

Thomas Barrow (’63 photography)
Edward A. Gallucci (’68 photography)
Joe Deal (’70 photography)
James Hajicek (’70 photography) and Carol Panaro
E.G. Schempf (’72 photography)
Lawrence McFarland (’73 photography)
Ellen Carey (’75 photography)
Karen Glaser (’76 photography)
Chuck Avery (’77 photography)
Frank Hamilton (’77 photography)
Mark Osterman (’77 photography)
Russell Phillips (’77 photography)
Don McKenna (’78 photography)
Jeff Burke (’79 photography)
Jamie Tuttle (’86 photography)
Robert and Shana Parke Harrison (Robert ’90 photo/video)
Dana Fritz (’92 photography)
Stuart Allen (’94 photography)
Nicole Cawlfield (’97 photography)
Raissa Venables (’99 photography)
Allyson Lubow (’02 photography)
Ross Sawyers (’02 photography)
Jaimie Warren (’02 printmaking)
Cortney Andrews (’05 photography)
Jeff Eaton (’07 photography)
Colby Sempek (’07 photography)
Robert Heishman (’08 photography)

The show is dedicated to Joe Deal (’70 photography), who died in June.

“In 1949, an honorary membership in KCAI, the only one ever given, was bestowed upon a unique individual who contributed as much to the school as anyone in its history. His name was Oscar (Ted) Larson, and he had been hired in 1921 as superintendent of buildings and grounds. Unofficially, however, he was known as the ‘dean of students’ and the operator and manager of the famous ‘tea room.’ Larson was the pioneer and promoter of the “working scholarship plan” on campus whereby a student would sweep studios, wash dishes or double as a gardener in exchange for an education. Many a student in financial straits was given a hand by the ‘dean;’ 26 students were on this plan in 1949 and 600 students over the years benefited from this program.

“His tea room was made popular not only by his secretly blended beverage, but also by the continuous art exhibition of student work, which Larson was careful to change every two weeks. This mild-mannered, obliging man sympathized with students, fed them when they could not afford it and furthered their work in every way possible. When Wallace C. Goffe gave his home to the Institute for a women’s dormitory, the question of a housemother arose. Finding none available, Larson was appointed to fill the gap. He was the best man at numerous Art Institute weddings and once he gave a bride away in a ceremony at the women’s dorm. By 1950, when he retired, Mr. Larson needed a museum of his own to house the 1,000 art works that were his gifts from students. On his death, these works were turned over to KCAI, which kept a few. Others were sold through the Fireside auction, and proceeds were applied to the Larson scholarship, which was set up in his honor.”

From “The History of the Kansas City Art Institute: A Century of Excellence and Beyond,” by Milton S. Katz.