Contemporary Art Museum St Louis

Exhibition programs: the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (cam), a non-collecting institution, is internationally recognized for exhibitions of the most provocative, insightful, and relevant Contemporary Art being made today. Cam presented exhibitions of prescient and seminal work by emerging and established artists, working with varied media including painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, textiles, installation, and video. In fy22, cam featured exhibitions by kathy butterfly, shara hughes, and farah al qasimi in the fall/winter season, followed by alia farid, martine gutierrez, and gala porras-kim in the spring/summer. Alongside its exhibitions, cam produces scholarly catalogs; an illustrated, full color book including texts and interpretive essays for the international group exhibition stories of resistance, published in fy22. With limited on-site capacity due to covid, the Museum served 19,147 visitors in person and 242,429 visitors online.

Education programs: cam remains dedicated to fostering creativity and increasing access to the arts for the young people of St. Louis through free arts education initiatives. These include pre-professional training in new Art in the neighborhood (at 27 years, cam's longest running education program); an opportunity to organize an exhibition from start to finish in teen Museum studies; advanced studio Art training with an emphasis on collaboration for middle schoolers in the leap middle school initiative; and in-school and off-site community engagement activities under the artreach program. Cam is proud of the meaningful ways its programs make a difference to St. Louis youth, and each season presents the work of young artists in the education galleries. In fy22, works were shown by students participating in new Art in the neighborhood, and leap middle school initiative, as well as collective impact exhibitions, the result of a new partnership between cam and creative reaction lab, which trains young artists and designers of color. Teen Museum studies presented an exhibition by the local artist summer brooks, whose work challenges harmful beauty standards for african american women. All youth programs continued uninterrupted in fy22, though many classroom activities were conducted via digital format. In fy22, the Museum served 1,313 youth from the greater St. Louis area.

Public programs: in conjunction with its exhibitions, cam delivers Art education to people of all ages by presenting a diverse line-up of public programs that include artist and curator lectures, art-inspired dinners; film screenings; and unique workshops for families with young children. Cam's public programs were held onsite and online throughout fy22, including artist talks, panel discussions, a feast your eyes dinner with a celebrated local chef, and hands-on Art instruction with preschoolers, teens, and seniors. In fy22, cam hosted 157 programs and tours, of which 99% were free.