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The Missouri Arts Council has chosen the recipients of the 2022 Missouri Arts Awards, the state’s highest honor in the arts. Honorees are recognized for their profound and lasting contributions to Missouri’s artistic and cultural legacy. 

Arts Education | Building Futures, St. Louis

STEAM-based design-and-build organization that gives young people ages 5-18, many of them at-risk from low-income communities, the joy of realizing their creativity while learning rigorous construction and problem-solving skills—working individually and in teams at their schools and Building Futures’ workshop; using hand tools, power tools, computers and more to imagine and execute projects that have ranged from collages, paintings, and architectural models to full-scale functional boats

• Building Futures

Arts Organization | Kansas City Public Theatre

Four-year-old professional theater company that has already made its mark through its mission of deploying “Radical Hospitality” to provide theater to every person: presenting all shows free of charge in a variety of accessible locations, performing plays both classic and contemporary that are topical and full of diverse actors and stories, hiring area playwrights for the Theatre Lab series of staged readings and small productions, and further building community through audience conversations and local partnerships

• Kansas City Public Theatre

Creative Community | City of Branson

Southwestern Missouri city that since the 1960s has burgeoned into a national tourism magnet centered on theater, traditional Ozark arts, and especially music—now boasting nearly 40 theaters along nine miles east to west, from the 1936 Historic Owen Theatre in Branson’s historic downtown to the Silver Dollar City theme park’s outdoor amphitheater, that each week present more than 100 shows of country, pop, swing, rock, bluegrass, Broadway, and gospel music, plus magic, circus, comedy, and drama

• Explore Branson

Individual Artist | Carmen Sofia Dence, St. Louis

Dancer, choreographer, teacher, costume designer and maker, arts volunteer, community champion, five-time Master Artist in the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program of the Missouri Folk Arts Program—a shining light of Missouri’s dance community for decades; born in Colombia, a St. Louisan since 1976; devoted to preserving and sharing the music, dance, and folklore of her homeland especially through the Grupo Atlántico performance troupe she founded in 1995 and continues to direct

• Grupo Atlántico

Leadership in the Arts | Jeffrey J. Bentley, Kansas City

Executive director of Kansas City Ballet since 1998, who has taken the company on a constantly rising path to serve its vision of “outstanding dance experiences accessible to all”: leading it to quintuple its budget, quadruple its school, construct its own permanent home, build a substantial endowment, expand community engagement and education programs, diversify its artistic offerings, and most recently, keep dancers and staff employed and audiences involved during the pandemic shutdown of live performances

• Kansas City Ballet

Philanthropy | Kathie and Richard Winter, St. Louis

Longtime arts supporters who exemplify the classic contribution of time, talent, and treasure to benefit an array of St. Louis organizations—serving individually and together, past and present, as board members and officers, committee members and chairs, fundraising leaders, and financial mainstays of Big Muddy Dance Company, Dance St. Louis, Grand Center Arts District, Jazz St. Louis, St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, Springboard to Learning, Stray Dog Theatre, St. Louis University Museum of Art and more

Since founding the Missouri Arts Awards in 1983, the Missouri Arts Council and the State of Missouri have honored 235 people, organizations, and communities throughout the state.

The Missouri Arts Council has chosen the recipients of the 2021 Missouri Arts Awards, the state’s highest honor in the arts. Honorees are recognized for their profound and lasting contributions to Missouri’s artistic and cultural legacy. 

Arts Education | Ben Martin, Lee’s Summit
Teacher, leader, and arts education advocate, from 34 years of teaching, to 10 years with the Missouri Alliance for Arts Education including seven as executive director, to his current work with Missouri Citizens for the Arts and as Missouri’s state captain for Americans for the Arts.

Arts Organization | Upstream Theater, St. Louis
Small professional theater company committed from its start in 2005 to promoting diversity, inclusion, and the cultures and concerns of people from around the globe by bringing audiences international plays performed with imaginative non-traditional casting.

Creative Community | Cherokee Street, St. Louis
Since the 1900s a global crossroads in South St. Louis – neighborhood of artists, studios, galleries, antique stores, music-filled watering holes, Latinx and Black mom-and-pop businesses, festivals and cultural events, spangled with public art from sculptures to participatory murals.

Individual Artist | Priya Kambli, Kirksville
Internationally recognized photographer whose art is suffused with themes of loss, love, and memory across generations of family, inspired by the archive of family heirlooms, artworks, and photographs she brought with her to the U.S. when she migrated from India at age 18.

Leadership in the Arts | Laura Shultz, Kansas City
Executive director of the Northeast Community Center since 2008 and architect of the Center’s Harmony Project KC, the local iteration of a Los Angeles-born music program that through education and mentoring helps the community‘s most vulnerable children and their families.

Philanthropy | Clayco, St. Louis
One of the nation’s largest privately-owned real estate, architecture, engineering, design-build and construction firms, and a major supporter of the arts especially equity efforts such as its own new Juneteenth Program and the Future Leaders Fellowship with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.

Since founding the Missouri Arts Awards in 1983, the Missouri Arts Council and the State of Missouri have honored 229 people, organizations, and communities throughout the state.