Vera Ellen Wang is an American fashion designer.
Elsa Peretti, OMRI OMM, was an Italian jewelry designer and philanthropist as well as a fashion model. Her jewelry and design pieces for Tiffany & Co. are included in the 20th century collection of the British Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. In 1974 Peretti, the “Halstonette” fashion model arrived at Tiffany's with her modern jewelry. Her broadly popular work, including pieces like Bean, Bone Cuff and Open Heart, became as much as 10% of Tiffany’s business and John Lorning's Tiffany Style – 170 Years of Design devotes 18 pages of images to her jewelry and tableware design. Vogue described her as “arguably the most successful woman ever to work in the jewelry field.” As a philanthropist, Peretti supported a wide variety of causes, and also privately undertook the restoration of the historic village of Sant Martí Vell in Catalonia, Spain.
The Belger Arts Center (BAC) is a non-profit organization located in Kansas City, Missouri. It houses a fine art collection and also holds exhibitions of various art.
Ebony G. Patterson is a Jamaican-born visual artist and educator. She is known for her large and colorful tapestries created out of various materials such as, glitter, sequins, fabric, toys, beads, faux flowers, jewelry, and other embellishments. Her "Gangstas for Life series" of dancehall portraits, and her garden-inspired installations.
Joan Hornig is an American jewelry designer.
Peggy Noland is an American fashion designer based in Kansas City, Missouri and Los Angeles, CA. She has been a teacher in the Fiber Department at the Kansas City Art Institute since 2008.
Peregrine Honig is an American artist whose work is concerned with the relationship between pop culture, sexual vulnerability, social anxieties, the ethics of luxury and trends in consumerism. Honig appeared on season one of Bravo’s artist reality television show, Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, which aired from June 9–August 11, 2010, finishing in second place.
The Kansas City Ballet (KCB) is an American professional ballet company based in Kansas City, Missouri. The company was founded in 1957 by Russian expatriate Tatiana Dokoudovska. The KCB presents five major performances each season to include an annual production of The Nutcracker. In the 2016–2017 season, KCB grew to an all-time high with 30 company dancers, 15 second company dancers, 64 full-time and part-time staff, and a network of over 400 local volunteers. The KCB, its school, and its staff are all housed in, operate from, and rehearse at the Todd Bolender Center for Dance and Creativity, a renovated, seven-studio, office, and rehearsal facility in Kansas City, Missouri, that opened in August 2011. The company performs at and is the resident ballet company at the nearby Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, a performance venue in downtown Kansas City that opened in September 2011.
Kendra Scott is an American fashion designer. She is the executive chairwoman, designer, and former chief executive officer of Kendra Scott, LLC. In 2017, she was named Ernst & Young's National Entrepreneur of the Year.
Monique Péan is an American artist whose practice is focused on fine jewelry, sculpture, painting and furniture. Her studio is based in New York City. Her work explores themes of space, temporality, identity, and origins, and makes use of materials such as fossils, meteorites, and sustainable recycled metals.
Nirith Nelson is a contemporary art and design curator and art educator. She is the art director of the Residency Program of the Jerusalem Center for the Visual Arts.
Michael Vance Toombs is an American artist based in Kansas City. He is a painter, arts educator, and arts community project director. Toombs is specifically known for his interactive community murals in Kansas City, Missouri. Toombs is the founder of Storytellers Inc., an artists collective that designs and implements work with inner city youth and children in urban communities in Kansas and Missouri.
Established in 2015, the Artists' File Initiative (AFI) is an archival project located in The Spencer Art Reference Library at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Leomie Jasmin Francis Anderson is a British model, fashion designer, and activist. She has walked in four consecutive Victoria's Secret Fashion Shows from 2015 to 2018, and became a Victoria's Secret Angel in 2019. Anderson was included in a 2020 Forbes '30 Under 30' list for the art & culture category.
Hasna Sal is an American glass sculptor known for designing and sculpting large-scale glass sculptures and glass jewelry.
Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin is an American fiber artist, author, designer, community organizer, and curator. Ruffin creates quilts using fabric, symbolism, and references to African textile motifs that explore issues dealing with human rights, race, and gender. Her work has been exhibited across the United States, Africa, and Europe, at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the White House Rotunda, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. She has been a resident artist at the Charlotte Street Foundation and a resident curator at the American Jazz Museum. Thompson-Ruffin is one of the founding members of the African American Artists Collective, a group of African American artists in Kansas City. Thompson-Ruffin was selected to create the Nelson Mandela memorial coverlet by the South African Consulate and the Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral. Her work is held in collections such as the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas, and others. Her work has been featured on the front covers of New Letters literary journal and of KC Studio Magazine.
Shane W. Evans is an American children's book author, illustrator, painter, storyteller, and musician born in New York. He attended the Syracuse University School of Visual and Performing Arts and majored in illustration. Evans' work has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, Reading Rainbow, and Late Night with David Letterman.
The African American Artists Collective is a group of Black and African American artists in Kansas City that serves to connect and provide opportunities for Black artists in Kansas City and surrounding communities. The product of a 2014 meeting at Gates Barbecue with Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II and his assistant Jim Vaughan, Kansas City artists Glenn North, Diallo Javonne French, Gerald Dunn, Jason Piggie, NedRa Bonds and Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin started hosting regular meetings and gaining press coverage for their work in the Kansas City community.
Michael Brantley is an American painter, known for his large-scale photorealistic oil paintings of African American jazz icons like Ella Fitzgerald and Freddie Hubbard. In 2015, Brantley was diagnosed with sarcoidosis and was initially denied insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act. Brantley is a member of the African American Artists Collective in Kansas City, MO.
Reagan Charleston is an American jewelry designer, lawyer and reality television personality known for appearing on Southern Charm New Orleans.
