Missouri Remembers: Artists in Missouri through 1951

Abstract

Missouri Remembers: Artists in Missouri through 1951 is a collaborative project of The Spencer Art Reference Library of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, in partnership with the Kansas City Art Institute and The Saint Louis Public Library that will document the state’s artistic heritage. To create this freely available online resource partner institutions are mining their artist files and archival collections to document the many artists who called Missouri home. The portal allows researchers, art enthusiasts and students to learn about Missouri artists and to study the relationships between the artists, organizations, exhibitions and institutions that have defines the state artistic culture. Users are able to browse by city, medium, or time period to discover generations of artists who called Missouri home. The resulting online resource allows users to explore iconic artists like Thomas Hart Benton and George Caleb Bingham and to discover lesser known artists who lived in, or spent part of their careers within, the State of Missouri through the mid-twentieth century. Project researchers are prioritizing the difficult task of documenting the careers of artists from under-represented groups whose artistic contributions may not be as widely known or documented. This collaborative project will fill a void in the resources available for the study of Missouri’s artists. Biographical dictionaries are foundational reference resources that document a state’s, region’s or even city’s artistic heritage. Missouri doesn’t have this type of resource but it is something that several cultural institutions in the state have been working towards by maintaining physical artist files that document Missouri artists. This project was made possible through funding from the Missouri Humanities Council and from the National Endowment for the Humanities.