Introducing CATurday at NCHC24
This year, experience the City as Text™ explorations you love at an all new day and time! Celebrate Kansas City and its unique neighborhoods and communities throughout the entire NCHC24 conference, culminating with citywide CAT explorations for all attendees on Saturday before our Conference Closing Celebration. Spend CATurday taking a deep dive into the City as Text pedagogy, viewing a city and its inhabitants in a whole new way.
"What lies beneath the surface, we tell our explorers, is what we want to expose to our gaze and unmask for our deeper consideration. What we suspect about “place” reveals what makes it unique: the particular contradictions that reveal themselves only if we look more carefully, critically, and sensitively at what hides them. These underlying contradictions are what we think about when we consider a constellation of CAT questions about a place: What does it feel like to live/be here? For whom/what? Under what circumstances?"
-- Bernice Braid, Place, Self, Community: City as Text™ in the Twenty-First Century
Check out one of these Kansas City destinations as a part of your CAT adventure at NCHC24!
Register to attend NCHC24, and mark your RSVP for City as Text!
City Market and Arabia Steamboat Museum:
City Market is a 150-year-old historical gathering place with an eclectic mix of merchants overseeing shops and stands with fresh produce, ethnic foods and groceries, and unique gifts. In this interesting amalgam of people shopping and selling, you can hear over seven languages spoken daily! The Arabia Steamboat Museum displays the artifacts found in the Arabia Steamboat, which sank in 1856 and was resurrected intact in the 1990’s.
Crossroads Art District:
Once-vacant buildings now house unique shops, restaurants, and a thriving art scene. This district is an interesting study of re-imagining the use of spaces to reinvent a neighborhood! Anchored by the strikingly contemporary Kauffman Center, which hosts opera, ballet and concerts, Crossroads is packed with happening art galleries in restored warehouses. At monthly First Friday events, art shows and food trucks draw big crowds.
Federal Reserve Bank Money Museum:
Inside the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, guests access interactive exhibits. They learn about the nation’s financial system, banking, the economy and the Federal Reserve. How people pay for things, and how monetary policy decisions affect us. Check out the cash vault that is four stories and lift a gold bar valued at close to $400,000. **Photo ID required for visitors 18 or older.
Guadalupe Centers:
According to the National Register for Historic Places, the Guadalupe Centers is the longest continuously operating agency serving Latinos in the United States. Located on Cesar E. Chavez Avenida in the Westside, this Center has been providing services to Latino populations for over 85 years. Close by, a community center, park spaces, murals, and galleries define this neighborhood for the Latino community.
Mattie Rhodes Art Center and Gallery:
The Mattie Rhodes Art Center and Gallery in Westside houses two and three-dimensional Latino arts. This is a great time of year to experience the Latino culture and the Day of the Dead holiday. A bonus: from the high vista of the Center, one can get a great view of the surrounding area. The area has some of the oldest houses in Kansas City.
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art :
Opening in 1994, this museum has a rapidly growing collection of contemporary works of art from artists around the world and is itself an architectural expression of contemporary art.
Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology:
One of the world’s greatest libraries of science, engineering and technology with more than a million volumes in its collection, including rare books from the 15th century— Gutenberg’s era.
National World War I Museum and Liberty Memorial:
The state-of-the-art Museum gives you the chance to explore and discover the nation’s most extensive assembly of artifacts, photography, art, and narratives of the Great War ever presented in a single collection. The Museum introduces the war in unprecedented ways: visual and audio sensory stimulation molds an unforgettable experience in the minds of all visitors – young and old. 8.
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and Sculpture Park:
Two buildings of differing architecture into a visual wonder holding world class art. It is surrounded by the 22-acre Kansas City Sculpture Park, home to the largest collection of Henry Moore sculptures. The Bloch Building of the Museum is to be experienced during the day and later in the night. The Museum is open on Thursdays until 9:00 PM.
Toy and Miniature Museum:
This specialty museum, located on UMKC’s campus, is a 38-room house that boasts the largest collection of nostalgic toys, fine-scale miniatures and marbles in the Midwest. This is a journey through the evolution of childhood that offers a glimpse into values and virtues of other cultures and times.
Union Station and the Freight District:
Standing proudly in the middle of the East –West U. S. transportation path, Union Station is a restored 1914 railroad hub and currently a stop on the Los Angeles to Chicago Amtrak. This site includes an interpretive exhibit telling the history of the building, its architecture, engineering, construction, and preservation. Additional entrance fee activities are housed inside the building. The Freight District adjoins Union Station and consists of renovated warehouses that now have been rejuvenated by a major art and civic redevelopment initiative.
Westport:
The site of a bustling outpost and Civil War combat, the Westport area is now home to boutiques and an array of restaurants and watering holes. As a neighborhood, it is easily identifiable with 19th-century charm. Nearby on 39th Street West is a wonderful collection of ethnic restaurants and shopping. A few blocks away is the Thomas Hart Benton historic home.
18th & Vine District: American Jazz Museum
The sights and sounds of a uniquely American art form come alive at the American Jazz Museum. Located in the 18th & Vine Historic Jazz District in Kansas City, this is the place where jazz masters such as Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Big Joe Turner, and hundreds of others defined the sounds of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. Today, scholars, students, musicians, and fans are drawn here to learn about the legends, honor their legacy, or simply enjoy the best music America has to offer.
18th & Vine District: Negro Leagues Baseball Museum
The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is the world's only museum chronicling the stars and stories of America’s favorite pastime from the leagues’ origin after the Civil War to their demise in the 1960s. The NLBM operates two blocks from the Paseo YMCA where Andrew “Rube” Foster established the Negro National League in 1920.
18th & Vine District: Black Archives of Mid-America
The mission of the Black Archives of Mid-America in Kansas City, Inc. is to collect, preserve and make available to the public materials documenting the social, economic, political and cultural histories of persons of African American descent in the central United States, with particular emphasis in the Kansas City, Missouri region. It offers itself as an educational resource as well as a repository of every facet in African American culture; music, art , theater, education, the military, medicine, sports, religion and community affairs.
Country Club Plaza
Opened in 1923, The Plaza was the first regional shopping center in the world designed with parking to accommodate shoppers arriving by automobile. Created in 1922 by J. C. Nichols, the district is designed in Baroque Revival and Moorish Revival style echoing the architecture of Seville, Spain. While the positive contributions that Nichols made to Kansas City and urban development are undeniable, there is a dark history of how his influence impacted marginalized communities within Kansas City.
Harry Truman Presidential Library
The Truman Library is a Presidential Library operated by the Federal government. Built on a hill overlooking the Kansas City skyline, on land donated by the City of Independence, the Truman Library was dedicated July 6, 1957. President Truman actively participated in the day-to-day operation of the Library, personally training museum docents and conducting impromptu “press conferences” for visiting school students. A massive renovation of the museum and its exhibitions was recently completed, the first major renovation in more than 20 years and the largest since the museum opened its doors in 1957.
KCK/ Strawberry Hill
Adjacent to Downtown Kansas City, Kansas (KCK), Strawberry Hill is set on the bluffs overlooking the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. The neighborhood was populated in the late 1800s by a variety of immigrants from Croatia, Germany, Ireland, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Sweden. Strawberry Hill continues to be rich in culture and diversity today. The Strawberry Hill Museum and Cultural Center celebrates the many nationalities of Kansas City residents.
Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Center
The Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center & Museum is a beacon of African-American heritage in Kansas City, dedicated to commemorating and interpreting the rich diaspora through cultural and educational programs. Named after Bruce R. Watkins, a political and social activist, the center showcases his legacy and the contributions of African Americans who shaped the city and state's history.