KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For more than 20 years, John O’Brien’s Dolphin Gallery has been a cultural and community epicenter for Kansas City artists. Located in a huge white wall space in the West Bottoms, a historical area in downtown Kansas City, the Dolphin is the size of a barn, and embodies the charisma of an established Chelsea or Chicago River North gallery.
In addition to representing more than 50 artists, including NYC-based Kacy Maddux, soft performance pioneer David Ford, sound and performance artist Mark Southerland, Brussels-based artist/musician Christina Vantzou, and Richard Serra, Dolphin Gallery also functions as a framing service. The gallery’s artists are either based in Kansas City or have strong ties to the city. Dolphin also gives back to the local creative community by employing artists, many of whom are typically working a combination of odd jobs. All of this will end with the closure of Dolphin Gallery.
Dolphin Gallery (image via Cupcakes in Regalia)
“There is something very solid and comfortable about Dolphin Gallery,” says Cara Megan Lewis, former curator at Cara & Cabezas Gallery in Kansas City and current Associate Director at Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago. “Though I never attended one of their annual barbeques, I coveted the routine nature of this annual event — an easy liaison between the gallery’s ‘white cube’ and the American Royal rodeo down the street. [This is] quintessential Kansas City.”
Artist Peregrine Honig, who has been with the Dolphin Gallery for five years and is best known to national audiences for her second-place finish on season 1 of BRAVO’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, notes that news of the Dolphin’s closing was difficult to hear, but in the long-term best for the gallery and Mr. O’Brien.
“It’s better to have a dealer who knows it’s time to make a change than a dealer who hangs on and makes poor choices,” says Honig. “I commend John for deciding that his role as the owner of an art gallery has come to end.”
For Honig, whose work is both vulnerable and public in its discussions of early sexual awakenings, disease, consumerism and the social anxieties of both real and fictional characters, and who, as an artist, is familiar with being in the public eye, finding a dealer who is trustworthy and honest is not easy.
“When you allow yourself to live in a glass house and make your work, [losing a gallery] can feel like a wall has come down,” she said.
O’Brien’s transition from gallery owner and dealer into his own creative visual practice appears to be the best move for him, according to reports from the Kansas City Star.
The end of the Dolphin
The Dolphin Gallery will close after its final group exhibition, titled with a tongue-in-cheek Thanks For the Warning; the exhibition opens on May 17 and will run through June 22.