ArtSmash 2025
ArtSmash 2025
Riff/Evolve
Where Music Meets Fashion
Join us as we celebrate the vibrance of cultural rhythm, where melody, beats, dance, and fashion collide. We honor the legacy of diverse cultural expression through movement, color, and unapologetic style. At the Kemper Museum Gala, we're Artsmashing style and music, emotion and technology, digital intimacy and analog simplicity. You will leave the experience with all creative senses enlightened!
October 4, 2025
Cocktails 7 pm
Dinner 8pm
Followed by dancing until midnight
Kemper Museum
Kansas City, MO
Event Leadership
Honorary Chair
Matthias Pintscher
Music Director of the Kansas City Symphony
Co-Chair
Keisha Jordan
Co-Chair
Paige Marley
to Wear
What
The Riff and Evolve Gala celebrates cultural rhythm in edgy, sparkly, bold, and elegant style. Inspired by eras and aesthetics where music and fashion feed each other, expect fearless color, striking silhouettes, and statement details that demand attention. This is a night where every outfit becomes part of the performance—unapologetic, confident, and unforgettable.
Get inspired—explore our Pinterest board for more looks
the Menu
On
Photo by Anna Petrow Mulvihill. Florals by Floraloom.
Enjoy a special menu created by Kemper Museum Chef Partner Ted Habiger. A three-time James Beard Foundation Outstanding Chef Award nominee, Habiger is a chef, restaurateur, sommelier, and entrepreneur with a decades-long commitment to local farmers and sustainable practices. He led Cafe Allegro, Kansas City's top Zagat-rated restaurant (1996–2000), served as sous chef at Danny Meyer's Union Square Cafe in New York City (2001–2003). Habiger is the owner and chef at Room 39, which opened in 2004 and recently joined the new CPKC Stadium as a vendor for the Kansas City Current. In addition to Room 39, Habiger is chef partner at Ánima, a restaurant in Mérida, Mexico, and he owns a commissary kitchen in Kansas City that supports local food trucks and entrepreneurs.
Installation View, Stan Douglas: Metronome, March 28, 2025 - October 12, 2025, Charlotte Crosby Kemper Gallery, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Photo: E.G. Schempf, 2025.
Featured Exhibition
Stan Douglas: Metronome
Stan Douglas (b. 1960) is a Canadian artist whose work investigates the intersection of technology, image-making, and collective memory through the mediums of film and photography. For Stan Douglas: Metronome at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, three major video works are showcased, each focused on the theme of music. As an audiophile and former DJ, Douglas uses music as a metaphor for social and political conditions and a means for global cultural exchange. By intertwining historical moments with the present, his work highlights themes of memory, social unity, conflict, and the complexities of cultural interaction.
Kemper Museum remains open and free to all only because “free to all” means supported by many. Please share our gratitude for what all our donors, members, and volunteers make possible.
Gratitude
Eternal
Three ways you make a difference by supporting ArtSmash:
Access
You keep exhibitions and public programs free and accessible for everyone.
Inclusion
You provide a platform for artists representing diverse backgrounds and perspectives, and foster a welcoming environment of belonging for all.
Innovation
You support cutting-edge artists, often at key moments in their careers, and programs that use art to teach everyone from tots to medical students.