ION Gallery

ION Gallery is a photography-forward contemporary art gallery in the West Bottoms’ Holsum Building, co-founded in November 2024 by photographer-curator Elise Gagliardi with collector Dwight Smith and the United Colors principals Sam Haan and Cesar Lopez.

Description

ION Gallery is a contemporary art gallery in the Holsum Building at 1200 W 12th Street in Kansas City’s West Bottoms, opened in November 2024.¹² The gallery is led by Elise Gagliardi — a Kansas City-based photographer and curator — and was co-founded with collector Dwight Smith and Sam Haan and Cesar Lopez of United Colors, situating ION inside the broader West Bottoms artist-run and gallery cluster anchored by the Holsum ecosystem.¹ Programming leans photography-forward, reflecting Gagliardi’s own practice and curatorial background.¹

Ownership and history

Elise Gagliardi is the operational lead behind ION; the November 2024 launch was a four-person co-founding effort with Dwight Smith on the collector side and Sam Haan and Cesar Lopez, both principals at United Colors, on the artist/gallerist side.¹ KC Studio’s “Artists in Charge” feature frames ION as part of a wave of artist- and curator-driven West Bottoms spaces during this period.¹ The gallery’s location in the Holsum Building places it in immediate proximity to that cluster.²

Specific ownership structure (LLC filing, equity split among the four co-founders) is “.

Links

• Website: https://www.ion-gallery.com/
• Contact page: https://www.ion-gallery.com/contact
• KC Studio profile: https://kcstudio.org/artists-in-charge-kansas-city/
• Instagram: “

Exhibitions / programming

Programming is photography-forward, tracking Gagliardi’s curatorial identity.¹ Specific current or recent exhibitions, artist rosters, and opening-reception schedules are pending direct extraction from the operator site's exhibitions listing. Cluster context — First Friday participation, coordination with United Colors and the Holsum tenant mix — is likely but not source-confirmed here and is.

Sources

Footnotes

1. “Artists in Charge — Kansas City,” KC Studio — Elise Gagliardi opened ION Gallery in November 2024 with Dwight Smith and United Colors’ Sam Haan and Cesar Lopez. URL ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

2. ION Gallery contact page — confirms 1200 W 12th St, Holsum Building address. URL ↩ ↩²