Alice Thorson
athorson@kcstar.com

When I joined the Kansas City art scene as The Star's art critic in 1991, I encountered a small, but serious community of artists, curators, collectors and patrons poised to realize some big plans for developing the city's art resources.

Heaven knows our cultural reputation declines when prominent former Missourians like John Ashcroft decide to cover a bare-breasted historical statue, or Calvin Trillin gasses on in The New Yorker about his nostalgic attachment to the American Hereford Association's landmark plastic bull.

But from the moment I arrived here it was clear to me that the rube stereotype outsiders were prone to apply was a misrepresentation.