About the gallery
Four Chapter Gallery was founded in 2013 when the Christ Community Downtown Campus was launched.
We are proud to show the work of emerging and established artists who work in a variety of media. We have three core values when it comes to the kind of work we desire to present in our space.
1. ART WITH IDEAS
We are very interested in artwork that has been created around particular themes, ideas, or research.
The work can certainly be driven by process as well as ideas, but meaningful ideation is important to us as a gallery.
2. THE WORK OF
EMERGING ARTISTS
We exhibit the work of established artists in our gallery, but we have a special desire to boost emerging artists. If you’ve never exhibited before and are excited to present your work, we’d love to consider it.
If you or someone you know is an emerging artist, please consider filling out or sharing our submissions page.
3. ART THAT CREATES GENERATIVE CONVERSATION
We love exhibiting work that presses into issues relevant to our culture, city, and neighborhood in a generative way.
We seek to show artwork that promotes growth and sparks interesting conversation.
OUR STORY
Christ Community’s Downtown Campus was launched on July 14, 2013. One of our goals has been to celebrate, participate in, and contribute to the beauty that is already being cultivated in the rich arts community of the Crossroads District, and so by September of that same year we hosted our first exhibition of a private collection of prints made through various techniques.
Four Chapter Gallery has pursued ongoing partnerships with several organizations in Kansas City. One highlight for us is our partnership with the Kansas City Art Institute Fiber Department. Since 2015, we’ve offered our space each May to an outstanding senior (or group of seniors) in the fiber arts department each spring for their senior show, and we have been delighted to host many beautiful works of art by these emerging student artists.
OUR NAME
Our name refers to the concept of the Four Chapter Gospel: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Renewal. We believe that the biblical story of Creation displays the inherent value and dignity of all human beings, and we believe that artists are invited to uniquely participate in the Renewal of the world alongside God through the act of generative creation. We believe art can be an avenue for conversation about the gospel and the God who is engaged in redeeming His grand world.
WHY AN ART GALLERY?
Four Chapter Gallery is an integral part of Christ Community’s Downtown Campus. We are both a church and a gallery. We long to incorporate artwork into our worship and formation in the ways that the church has historically engaged with arts. Because we are a church, we do approach art and the artist through the lens and narrative of Scripture, although our exhibited artists do not always share our faith. The most important thing to us is that there is a deep conversation taking place around art and ideas. Our congregation continually feels blessed by the generosity of our exhibiting artists and the beauty they create. They love both the enriching element of the arts in our community as well as the ways we encourage artists in their work. Our church deeply believes that our work is worship. God created work to be good, therefore it has inherent value. Artifacts made by human hands, as well as the practice of artmaking, are in themselves to be honored.
Aesthetics pull back the veil separating us from the unseen realities of the world in a way that nothing else can. Artists use their prophetic voices through image and metaphor in ways that go beyond words, and the results often produce awe and wonder. It is for all these reasons that we believe the church should be engaged in the arts. The arts are a catalyst for flourishing wherever they are cultivated. So if we care for our church, the city, and humanity as a whole, it is vital that we see artmaking as a crucial endeavor, and we are honored to support it.