Wichita Art Museum

The Wichita Art Museum has appointed a new curator to oversee its more than 8,000-piece collection.

Wichita native Tera Hedrick has worked with the museum since 2016, and has served as interim curator since last May.

"Tera exceeded every expectation, so much so that the museum ended its national search and selected her as the WAM curator for the museum’s next chapter,” WAM director Patricia McDonnell said in a statement Friday. “Tera is an extraordinary talent, and we are fortunate to keep her in her hometown of Wichita."

A new study from Americans for the Arts shows Wichita arts organizations generate millions of dollars for the city’s economy.

A collection of documentary photographs from 1974 is currently on display at the Wichita Art Museum. Black and white images of farmers, haystacks and shop fronts provide a look at rural Kansas as seen through the lens of three photographers. KMUW’s Sean Sandefur visited the gallery with one of those artists and has this report.

KMUW art reviewer Lindsey Herkommer-DeVries looks at a new outdoor display.

The latest art installations at the Wichita Art Museum won’t be found in the galleries inside the building.

Instead, they’re outside, in the newly landscaped grounds that surround the 80-year-old museum downtown.

The two new sculptures and the artistic landscape design are the foundation for the museum’s new “Art Garden,” which opens Saturday.

The Wichita Art Museum is marking a big milestone on Tuesday: its 80th anniversary.

The Wichita Art Museum (WAM) opened its doors at exactly 3 p.m. on Sept. 22, 1935.

The city of Wichita built the museum to house an American art collection donated to the city by the Murdock family.

Museum Director Patricia McDonnell says they have been marking the 80th anniversary all year, but will ramp up their special activities this fall.

Traveling to see art is one of my greatest pleasures! Whether it’s hunting for Connie Ernatt’s Troll by the river, or jet setting to a far-flung part of the earth, nothing replaces the joy of going and seeing art. 

If you’ve been to the Wichita Art Museum to see the daguerreotype exhibition Photographic Wonders but did not go downstairs, you missed a significant show.

Typically, WAM does a call-and-response structure with the main attraction upstairs and a response show downstairs. But this response show, Five Alchemists: Contemporary Photographers Explore 19th-century Techniques, marks three important landmarks for WAM:

The Wichita Art Museum has unveiled their newest exhibition Photographic Wonders: American Daguerreotypes from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. A Daguerreotype is one of the earliest forms of photography. Invented in France by Louis Daguerre in 1839, Daguerre revolutionized scientific observation as well as art. He discovered how to fix an image on to a silver plate with out it fading away – something his predecessors had not yet solved.