Charlotte Street's Paragraph Gallery Presents The Dining Room Project 3/19-5/7

Comprised of two exhibitions, a series of more than 30 original events, and a cookbook/catalogue, The Dining Room Project considers our multifaceted relationship with food and the intersection of food and art. With this expansive project, the concept and physical components of the dining room provide a platform for the exploration of such issues as hunger, sustenance, consumption, public health, sustainability, cultural symbolism within various traditions, and food and the meal's usefulness as vehicle for communication and creative expression.

As a partner and collaborator on this project, Charlotte Street's Paragraph gallery (an Urban Culture Project venue) will be transformed into a site for research, installations, conversations, and a diverse range of activities, events, performances, presentations, and meals. It will feature artworks, from video and installation to place-settings and centerpieces, by artists including Andrea Flamini, Lisa Marie Evans, Melissa Eder, Design Ranch, Peter Warren, PEASANTRY (Jessy Abid, Lee Heinemann, Cheyenne Craig), Meredith Host, Stephanie Kantor, Dame Osaurus, Paul Donnelly, Rain Harris, Julie Malen, and others. This Dining Room Project: Potluck Smorgasbord begins with an opening reception on March 18, 6-9pm, featuring several one-time only offerings, including a sampling of traditional Spanish Tapas by chef Carmen Cabia presented on Tapas Micros custom porcelainware by artist Ryan Fletcher, as well as a Super-taster Secret Society induction ceremony by Megan Mantia and Christopher Norman Good, welcoming those with particularly sensitive palettes.

New programming will be featured every week, including participatory activities, talks, screenings, workshops, tours, meals, excursions, and more. Visit www.charlottestreet.org or www.kcjmca for a full schedule of events (in progress) to occur at both Paragraph and Epsten galleries, and watch for updates as well as new documentation of activities each week. And visit www.kcjmca.org for more about the project as a whole, including the parallel exhibition at Epsten Gallery, featuring dozens of additional artists.

THE DINING ROOM PROJECT is ...
• Two thematic group exhibitions at the Paragraph Gallery March 18-May 7, 2011 and the Epsten Gallery March 20-May 15, 2011 featuring artists from our region alongside established artists from around the country and beyond. Each gallery will also serve as a Harvesters collection site for the community to build a food-bank to be donated to the region's needy residents

• A collaborative partnership between KCJMCA and the Charlotte Street Foundation's Urban Culture Project offering a community-driven, eight-week "meal" of installations, activities, discussions, screenings, workshops, excursions, performances, an array of dining experiences at Epsten and Paragraph galleries.

• 80-page catalogue/cookbook featuring work by exhibiting artists, recipes by well-known Kansas City visual artists and contributed text by food writer Charles Ferruzza, art historian Sherry Cromwell-Lacy, CSF Associate Director Kate Hackman, and KCJMCA Curator Marcus Cain

Charlotte Street Foundation
1000 West 25th Street
Kansas City MO 64108
816.221.5115
www.charlottestreet.org

Charlotte Street Foundation was established in 1997 in response to needs articulated by artists and those who saw the arts as a valuable creative, social and economic resource to the city. Charlotte Street Foundation's vision describes a vibrant city where artists are cultivated, respected and admired by leaders in the business, political, philanthropic and civic communities, as well as by a significant segment of the general public. The resulting support for artists leads artists to participate more fully in our community and attracts artists from other cities and the region.

To these ends, Charlotte Street Foundation supports and recognizes outstanding artists in Greater Kansas City; presents, promotes, enhances and encourages the visual, performing and interdisciplinary arts; and fosters economic development in the urban core of Kansas City, MO. In all endeavors, CSF places artists at the center of its mission and has built an infrastructure that depends on and reflects their involvement. As a result, CSF is an organization that continually evolves in response to artist input and in relation to the city's larger cultural ecosystem.

Through its Urban Culture Project initiative, founded in 2003, Charlotte Street supports artists of all disciplines and contributes to city's vitality by transforming previously vacant spaces into dynamic venues for multi-disciplinary contemporary arts programming, including exhibition, performance and studio spaces.

Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art
Epsten Gallery | Museum Without Walls
5500 West 123rd Street (at 123rd & Nall Avenue)
Overland Park, KS 66209
913.266.8413
www.kcjmca.org

Established in 1991, the Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art (KCJMCA) is a longstanding member of the Council of American Jewish Museums (CAJM), founded under the auspices of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. The purpose of KCJMCA is to provide innovative art exhibitions and related programming that engage seniors and diverse audiences from all segments of our community to enrich lives and celebrate our common humanity through art.

KCJMCA defines this intent largely through its Epsten Gallery and Museum Without Walls programs. Established in 2000, Epsten Gallery draws more than 7,200 visitors each year to its museum-quality exhibitions and social and educational programs, while representing a strategic partnership with Village Shalom, an innovative, continuum-care campus that houses the Epsten Gallery. KCJMCA also has a long history of facilitating collaboration with other venues through Museum Without Walls, a program that has been sharing cultural, intellectual, and collection resources and developing site-specific and traveling exhibitions, programs, and cultural events of original thematic content since 1991.

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