KC Streetcar Public Art

The Kansas City Streetcar (opened May 6, 2016) incorporated public art programming from its opening year, placing commissioned and temporary works at stations along the Main Street corridor through a recurring annual outdoor exhibition and, for the southern extension, through the city’s One Percent for Art ordinance.

The art program

The primary vehicle for streetcar public art is the Art in the Loop program, operated by the Art in the Loop Foundation (AILF) in partnership with the KC Streetcar Authority. Both the foundation and the program predate the streetcar, and the two dates are commonly conflated: AILF was founded in late 2004, and spent its first decade commissioning permanent works; the annual outdoor exhibition that now runs along the streetcar route began in 2014, and the program expanded to incorporate the rail route once the line opened.¹ Counting from the exhibition’s first season, 2024 was the eleventh year and 2025 the twelfth; AILF, the Downtown Council and the KC Streetcar Authority all call the 2026 season the thirteenth annual.¹ See art-in-the-loop for the foundation itself — its formation, remit, funding and governance.

Each year, AILF runs a competitive open call for Kansas City–metro artists. A selection panel of local artists, curators, educators, and community members chooses participants. Selected artists exhibit temporary installations at streetcar stops, wrap individual streetcar cars in full-color artwork, and stage live performances at stops along the route from approximately May through October or November. The annual program is organized around a single theme: past themes have included “Connect” (2016), “Celebrate” (2023), and “Convivencia” (2024).

Funding for the annual Art in the Loop program comes through the partnership between AILF and the KC Streetcar Authority. The annual exhibition is temporary by design — works rotate out each season — though AILF is not a temporary-work organization as such: it also maintains a portfolio of permanent installations commissioned mainly between 2005 and 2012, before the annual show began.¹ The exhibition is in any case distinct from the permanent commissions procured for the physical infrastructure of the streetcar extensions (see below).

Key works

Because the program is annual and rotating, the installations below represent documented examples rather than a fixed permanent collection.

2016 — “Art on the Line” (inaugural season) The 2016 season ran July through September in partnership with the streetcar’s opening year. Visual installations included:

Rachelle Gardner-Roe, I See You — Power & Light District Stop (northbound)
Andrew Lattner, Alternating Currents — Metro Center Stop / Petticoat Lane
m.o.i. (minister of information), rail – bike – rail — Library Stop (southbound)
Rickey Moss, Imagine That! and Intersections — Kauffman Center Stop (southbound)
Lauren Thompson, Life Turning — Delaware Street Bridge
White Art Studio, SOUNDSHAPES — Power & Light District Stop (southbound)

Performance events ran Friday middays at various stops, featuring dance, theater, and music by artists including Elizabeth Stehling, Stacy Busch, Jon Johnson, Amado Espinoza, Karen Lisondra, and Beau Bledsoe and Ensemble Iberica.

2022 season Notable installations included Dave Lowenstein’s You Are Here at the Union Station stop; David Wayne Reed’s Mother at the Kauffman Center southbound stop; DINKC Galicia’s Generations at the Power & Light southbound stop; Jennifer Lapka’s The Dieynaba Dress at Metro Center northbound; Raffaela Malazarte’s Mahalaga at the Library northbound stop; and Sol Anzorena’s Take Care of Who Cares For You at the River Market West stop. Devin Edwards’ Darrius’s Garden wrapped streetcar #806.

2023 — “Celebrate” Works included Arin Yoon’s Here, With You at River Market North; Bubblegum Kurt’s Party Balloons at Crossroads northbound; Isaiah Lee’s Demonstrations 3 at Metro Center northbound; Kaitlyn B. Jones’s How to Build an Altar for the Living at the Library southbound stop; Khyneesha Edwards’s Black Boy Joy at Union Station; and Madeline Marak’s Flower Garden at River Market West.

2024 — “Convivencia” Installations included Bei Hu’s multimedia work Our Sky Project at the Kauffman Center southbound stop; Maggie & Ellie Newlin’s oversized sculptural sunglasses K. See. The Good at Crossroads northbound; and Meranda McDermott’s fiber-art installation Threads of Convivencia at River Market West. Julia Morris’s digital illustration work EPH 4:2 wrapped streetcar #806.

2025 Visual artists included Max Dlabick’s Interplanetary Joyride on streetcar #814; Taylor Fourt’s Kansas City Grows Up at River Market West (4th & Delaware); Adrianne Clayton’s Reflection at the Library southbound stop (9th & Main); MacKenzie Fulmer’s Newcomer at Metro Center northbound (12th & Main); and David Morris’s Music is Community at the Kauffman Center southbound stop (16th & Main).

The extension and future art

The southern Main Street Extension opened October 24, 2025, adding 3.5 miles south from Union Station through the crossroads-arts-district and country-club-plaza corridor to UMKC, bringing the total system to 6.4 miles across 19 stations. A 0.7-mile northern extension to Berkley Riverfront Park opened in May 2026.

Permanent art commissions for the Main Street Extension were procured through the City of Kansas City’s One Percent for Art ordinance (enacted 1986), which requires that one percent of the estimated cost of eligible public construction projects be set aside for art acquisition and installation. The extension’s art call — issued in 2022 with a $185,000 total budget — sought both two-dimensional and three-dimensional works at two primary locations: approximately 51st Street and Main (near UMKC) and Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard and Main (near the country-club-plaza). Artists within the Kansas City Combined Statistical Area were eligible. Semifinalists received a $2,000 design fee to develop proposals before a single finalist was awarded the full contract.

The annual Art in the Loop program has also expanded its geographic scope alongside the extended route, with installations now distributed across the full corridor from the Berkley Riverfront north terminus through downtown-kc, the crossroads-arts-district, and into Midtown.

Sources

Art in the Loop Foundation founding and program chronology. AILF’s own 2007 organizational description, carried in an Art Daily press item: “a 501c3 non profit organization founded in late 2004 to commission lasting public art projects for select outdoor sites in the Downtown Loop” — https://artdaily.com/news/21777/Art-in-the-Loop-Commission-at-Oppenstein-Brothers-Memorial-Park. Corroborated by the organization’s IRS exemption record via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, EIN 20-2468361, exemption ruling date 1 May 2005 — https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/202468361. Asserts: AILF founded late 2004 with a permanent-commission mandate; the annual temporary exhibition dates from 2014, which is why the 2026 season is billed as the thirteenth annual. Corrects this page’s previous statement that the program “launched around 2014,” which conflated the foundation’s founding with the exhibition’s first season and understated AILF’s age by roughly a decade. Full treatment on art-in-the-loop. ↩ ↩² ↩³

KC Streetcar Public Art

The art program

Key works

The extension and future art

See also

Sources

See also

The art program

Key works

The extension and future art

See also

Sources

Footnotes

See also