Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
An integral part of the Sam Fox School, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is one of the nation’s leading university art museums, serving as a center of cultural and intellectual life for Washington University and the broader community.
Ai Weiwei: Bare Life at the Kemper Art Museum, 2019. Photo: Virginia Harold.
Nationally accredited with an internationally renowned collection, the Kemper Art Museum is located directly adjacent to student studio spaces. With some 8,700 artworks in its collection, the Museum has especially strong holdings of 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century European and American art and a growing diversity of international art. The Museum’s active exhibition program presents the work of important contemporary artists as well as historical art in thought-provoking thematic explorations of issues relevant to today’s world. Public lectures, panels, gallery talks, and performances provide a range of ways to delve deeper into the art, and the Art on Campus program brings site-specific installations by distinguished artists to campus.
The Kemper Art Museum embraces the idea that visual literacy and critical thinking are fundamental aspects of education, and it is dedicated to creating transformative learning experiences. Students are welcome to visit the Museum to sketch, grab a coffee, attend public programs, or just experience the art. Free student memberships allow even greater access, from exhibition previews to members-only programs, and special opportunities for students provide the chance for deeper engagement, including the student educator and education internship programs.
What’s on View at the Museum?
Exhibitions
Design Agendas explores a remarkably destructive, creative, dynamic, and conflicted time in St. Louis’s architectural and urban history.
Upcoming Events at the Museum
Jun 14 at 2pm • Kemper Art Museum
Join us for this annual performance event to celebrate the exhibition Seeds: Containers of a World to Come through music, dance, and art-making.
Free and open to the public.
Program
2–4 pm | Planting Microgreens and Art Activity with Seed St. Louis Jordan Plaza (Kemper south entrance)
Decorate your own container and get your hands dirty planting microgreens to cultivate at home.
2:15–2:30 pm | Juan William Chávez: Imaynatataq Papawan Sumaq Ch’in Chisi (How to Spend a Nice Quiet Evening with a Potato) Museum Lobby
Featuring experimental sounds from the Peruvian Andes, this 15-minute performance is complemented by video projections celebrating the ancestral significance of the potato, which was originally domesticated by the Indigenous peoples of the Andes approximately 7,000 to 10,000 years ago. The performance’s title draws inspiration from the American botanist and geneticist Edgar Anderson’s essay “How to Spend a Nice Quiet Evening with a Potato,” which was published in the Bulletin of the Missouri Botanical Garden in 1955.
2:45–3 pm | Lourdes del Mar Santiago Lebrón and Tess Angelica Losada-Tindall: Mangle
Barney A. Ebsworth Gallery
Dance artists Lourdes del Mar Santiago Lebrón (MFA 2025) and Tess Angelica Losada-Tindall (MFA 2025) present an embodied exploration of the intersections between the environmental fragility of the Caribbean mangle (mangrove) and the diasporic grief that stems from forced migration. The mangle mirrors diasporic migration through the displacement of its seedlings, which drop from its branches—in a process akin to live birth—only to be swept away by the currents of the waters in which it grows.
3:15–3:30 pm | Juan William Chávez: Imaynatataq Papawan Sumaq Ch’in Chisi (How to Spend a Nice Quiet Evening with a Potato) Museum Lobby
3:45–4 pm | Lourdes del Mar Santiago Lebrón and Tess Angelica Losada-Tindall: Mangle
Barney A. Ebsworth Gallery