Whether you are a Kansas City native or from out of town, there is always something new and exhilarating to explore in Kansas City. However, as college students, it may be daunting to find budget-friendly or free places to explore around the city this season. Since we are all busy with CTIs, other classes, research and work, below is a list of budget-friendly things during your leisure time. If you love art, books, museums or just exploring new places, you are bound to find something fun on this list to try!

Central Branch of the Kansas City Public Library 

First on our list of budget-friendly places to visit in the area is the Kansas City Public Library. The Central Branch of the Kansas City Public Library fulfills all book lovers’ dreams! Not only are there hundreds of amazing books, but also there is a large mural of many of the great classics located on the south wall of the library for all visitors to enjoy. Another thing to experience is the rooftop terrace, which features a chess board and great views of the city. The Central Branch is open:

• Mon. – Wed. 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
• Thurs. – Sat. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Sunday 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Taking a ride on the Kansas City Streetcar

Another free and wonderful thing to do in Kansas City is to take a ride on the streetcar from Union Station down to the City Market. The streetcar travels two miles through Kansas City and is a great way to see all must-see sights. You can visit Union Station at the beginning of your route and see all the old, beautiful architecture, then hop on track and ride down to the City Market to enjoy all the local vendors and shops. The streetcars’ hours of operation are:

• Mon. – Thurs. 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.
• Friday 6 a.m. to 1 a.m. (Saturday morning)
• Saturday 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. (Sunday morning)
• Sunday 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.

The Money Museum

Did you know that Kansas City is home to dozens of museums? One unique museum in the city is the Money Museum, which is located in the Kansas City  branch of the Federal Reserve Bank. This free museum has several exhibits on the history of money, inflation and presidential coin collections. Currently, through December 2022, the museum has a special exhibit on display of the Triple Play: Negro Leagues Baseball Commemorative Coins, and visitors can learn more about the history of Negro Leagues Baseball through the US Mint’s coin collection. The Money Museum is open:

• Mon. – Fri. 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Loose Park

If you enjoy the outdoors and free things, then Loose Park is the place for you to visit. Loose Park is the place to have a nice picnic on a beautiful weekend afternoon. While you’re there you can visit the famous 1.5-acre Rose Garden and pond area. If you are an avid history lover, you may find the history at Loose Park of interest; it is the historical site of the Civil War Battle of Westport and features a monument of the battle off of West 52^nd Street. The park is open:

• Every day, 5 a.m. to 12 a.m.

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art 

Art and Kansas City are synonymous in the minds of many.. Whether or not you are an art fanatic or have an appreciation for all things beautiful, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art should be on the list of places to visit. It is free to attend and open from 10 am to 4 pm Wednesdays and Fridays through Sundays and from 10 am to 9 pm on Thursdays. The museum boasts a large permanent collection of modern art from well-known artists like Georgia O’Keeffe, Tom Hück, and Leonard Pryor. If you get hungry on your visit, you can also visit Café Sebastienne for a small brunch or lunch while there. The museum is open:

• Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.
• Fri. – Sun., 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

From Nov. 15, 2019 to March 29, 2020, the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City will showcase a new exhibit called “Queen Nefertari: Eternal Egypt.” The exhibit consists of 230 works of art relating to both royal and everyday life in ancient Egypt’s New Kingdom, as well as the complex religious rites and traditions associated with the afterlife and the role of women in Egyptian society. The cost of attendance is $18 per person. 

Queen Nefertari was the favorite wife of Ramses II, or Ramses the Great, who ruled from 1279 to 1213 B.C. Ramses referred to her as “the one for whom the sun shines.” She was an extremely influential woman and in fact served as a diplomat under Ramses. When Queen Nefertari died in approximately 1255 B.C., a colossal temple was built in her honor at Abu Sinel. Her tomb in the Valley of the Queens is extremely elaborate – its walls are decorated with paintings of things like animals, gods and goddesses. 

Queen Nefertari’s tomb was discovered in 1904 by an Italian expedition led by Ernesto Schiaparelli, then director of the Museo Egizio in Italy. In fact, the Museo Egizio has partnered with the Nelson Atkins in order to bring this exhibition about. Like many other Egyptian tombs, Queen Nefertari’s tomb had been plundered by grave robbers, so many of the objects buried with her have been lost. Nonetheless, the tomb provided a wealth of information for Egyptologists. The exhibition at the Nelson Atkins will feature artifacts recovered at Nefertari’s tomb and the remains of Nefertari herself. Unfortunately, Nefertari’s mummified remains have been lost except for her kneecaps and legs. These underwent a CT scan at a Kansas City hospital before coming to the Nelson Atkins museum. 

Furthermore, a historic wooden model of Queen Nefertari’s tomb will be exhibited, and replicas of the tomb’s painting will also be featured. Other objects will exhibit the day-to-day life of craftsmen at the village of Deir-el Medina. These craftsmen worked on the royal tombs, including Queen Nefertari’s. A monumental granite sculpture of Ramses II between Amun, the sun god, and Amun’s wife, Mut, will also be showcased. Finally, the video game company Ubisoft has created a video simulation of life in ancient Egypt.

The Nelson Atkins is also hosting a variety of additional events to accompany the exhibit. For example, Dr. Christian Greco, director of the Museo Egizio, will give a talk about the Italian museum’s important Egyptian collection and the scientific research that accompanies it Nov. 14. A presentation on how climate change negatively affects cultural heritage, which includes Egyptian monuments and tombs, will be given Dec. 5. On January 30, the Nelson Atkins is hosting an “Ask an Egyptologist” event. Finally, a discussion about women and power in Egyptian society will take place March 5. These events are free, but tickets must be requested in advance through the Nelson Atkins website. 

Hew Locke’s exhibit “Here’s the Thing” opened at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art Sept. 12 and goes until Jan. 19, 2020. The exhibit is a collaboration between Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, UK; Colby College Museum of Art in Maine; and the Kemper Museum in Kansas City.

The exhibit is an exploration of the global, postcolonial world, with Locke, a British-Guyanese artist, working in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography and multimedia mediums. Locke’s most powerful tool in the exhibit is the re-appropriation of colonial forms, whether it’s jewels, precious metals, statues of Queen Victoria, trading ships or stock certificates. The use of these artifacts not only harkens back to the time when they helped produce the violence of colonialism, but it also exposes their appearance today and reclaims them, using them as part of colonial critique. Hew Locke’s personal experience involves boats, cross-continental voyages and living as a colonial subject.

“Guyana means ‘land of many waters’ – you are constantly aware of boats…People want simple answers about what this work is about, but it doesn’t exist. Migration, trade, refugees, warfare, exploration, tourism…[are] extremely messy and interlinked,” said Locke in a document about the exhibit.

While Locke’s work is striking without understanding the historical particulars of colonization, learning about the specific references he makes to ships, monarchs and events open the exhibit to even wider significance. The exhibit forces one to think and experience during the viewing process, and it also leads one to further exploration of, in this case, colonialism.

Aside from his iconic ships, one of the motifs Locke works with is the bust, as seen in the Souvenir series. Like “Untitled (Orange Queen),” the “Souvenir” series features busts of monarchs, in this case Queen Victoria, Princess Alexandria and Edward VII.

While each of the busts is white, they are all adorned with clay skulls, gold medallions, cowrie-shells military medals, fake beads, and even lace and crowns. The result is that the busts are dripping, overly adorned with symbols of wealth. The symbolic wealth, however, is consciously fake, in appearance and in the fact of its excess, giving it a hollow, shallow quality.

Locke said the following about “Untitled (Orange Queen),” in which the head is adorned with plastic toys, fake gems and cheap fake plants to the effect of gaudiness.

“It is aspirational – in that I try to take the cheapest thing I can find and work to make it look precious. The irony here is that the material I am using – such as golden plastic toy weapons and jewelry – are trying to look expensive”

Across from the “Souvenir” series is the “Wallpaper and Chinese Imperial Gold Loan.” The wall of this side of the room is an enlarged version of an antique loan document, and on the wall are small, framed versions of these loan documents. 

In one of these a painted version of Africa is overlaid on the document, painted as though it was made of jigsaw puzzle pieces. This clever and striking move points to the scramble for Africa that occurred in the heyday of colonization. The forced breaking up of Africa into mere game pieces of Europe is deftly shown in Locke’s work, coupling both historical documents with his modern work. The work’s palimpsestic quality adds another layer of meaning – emphasizing the multiplicity of identity in colonial society, the split consciousness of the colonial subject.

Taking up an entire room of the exhibit, Locke’s colossal installation, “Armada,” is extremely compelling. Suspended from the ceiling, over forty boats, many built by the artist, invoke feelings of transport, trade, travel, commerce and journeying.

“For me, a ship is a vessel to carry you on a journey,” Locke said. “It involves trade, it’s about a hope for a better life. It’s a container for the soul.”

Locke’s imaginative reimagining of ships works well to both acknowledge the devastating effects of colonialism and to reclaim colonial imagery that is forward-looking and hopeful.  

The last room of the exhibit features the video “The Tourists, 2015.” For this work Locke spent time on the HMS Belfast, a ship used in World War Two and the Korean War, which is now part of the Imperial War Museum.

In this video, Locke placed adorned mannequins throughout the ship, simultaneously acting as the ship’s crew but also, with their costumes and props, working as carnivalesque figures. This video is certainly disconcerting and another example of the reclamation of traditionally violent colonial objects in the name of critique.

Locke’s exhibit is one of the largest of his work, and it certainly makes quite a splash. Through the variety of mediums and the clever reclamation of colonial imagery as a means of critique, the exhibit shows the breadth and depth of Locke’s artistic capacities.

The exhibit runs until Jan. 19, 2020 at the Kemper Museum of Art in Kansas City. Admission is free to both the museum and the exhibit. Lunch at the museum’s Café Sebastienne is not required but is certainly tasty.