Run Wild! American Imagination on Paper

“Who but the artist has the power to open man up, to set free the imagination?”
–Henry Miller, American author

What was it like to be an angry colonist dumping British tea into Boston Harbor in 1773? What does a cicada’s song look like? What will happen at the end of time?

The artists featured in Run Wild! American Imagination on Paper answer these questions and more. This installation of American art on paper highlights the adeptness with which artists travel through time, visualize the impossible and conjure worlds never before seen.

Two centuries of prints, drawings and watercolors will transport you into the realm of make-believe at its most vivid. Let your imagination, like these artists’, run wild!

The Nelson-Atkins’ American collection has some 600 works on paper by many of the country’s most revered artists. Installations in this gallery rotate every six months in order to display the variety of the collection and to protect it from overexposure to damaging light. Showcasing a compendium of media, techniques, styles and themes, these rotating installations convey the engaging possibilities of art on paper.