Bridging Worlds Through Art, Part 1: An Evening with Basil Kincaid at the Missouri History Museum
Date: Thursday, July 30
Time: 5–8 p.m.
Location: Missouri History Museum, Lee Auditorium and MacDermott Grand Hall
Cost: Free
Bridging Worlds Through Art
What does it mean to be shaped by a city—and to carry its mark across the world? Join us for a two-part series with internationally acclaimed St. Louis artists whose work stretches far beyond St. Louis while remaining deeply rooted in it. These conversations go beyond dialogue, offering reflections on influence, legacy and the power of Black artistic practice to connect place, people and possibility.
Part 1: Bridging Worlds Through Art: An Evening with Basil Kincaid
Renowned fiber and textile artist Basil Kincaid is known for large-scale works that explore themes of ancestry, memory and Black experiences, connecting personal and collective histories. In a dynamic conversation with esteemed New York-based artist, curator and fellow St. Louis native Lamerol Gatewood, Kincaid reflects on the enduring influence of home, tracing the evolution of artmaking from local foundation to global resonance. Gatewood’s own celebrated career and curatorial lens brings depth and dimension, shaping a dialogue that draws out the nuance, intention and vision behind Kincaid’s work. Through their exchange, they also discuss the visceral and visionary energy of the 1960s Black Artists Group (BAG), whose St. Louis roots and radical creativity continues to resonate. This powerful evening reveals how art becomes a bridge between past, present, and future—and what it means to turn that inheritance into something expansive and enduring.
Join us in the Grand Hall before our main-stage event to enjoy food and drinks available for purchase. Visit resource tables hosted by local fiber arts organizations, check out fiber artist vendors and displays and try out a fiber art–inspired activity at our Historian’s Corner.
Schedule
5–7 p.m.: Food and drinks available for purchase.
5–6:30 p.m.: Visit resource, demonstration and vendor tables and visit our Historian’s Corner to learn more about fabric history.
6:30–8 p.m.: Head to the Lee Auditorium (lower level) as Basil Kincaid reveals how art becomes a bridge between past, present and future—and what it means to turn that inheritance into something expansive and enduring.
Please join us for Part 2: Bridging Worlds Through Art: An Evening with Cbabi Bayoc, on Thursday, August 20.
About the Artists
Basil Kincaid is a native St. Louis artist whose intricate textile works—spanning quilting, drawing, embroidery, installation and performance—serve as portals into spiritual and cultural memory. Known for a deep engagement with repurposed materials, Kincaid’s practice honors the legacy of Black quilt-making while expanding its language into new, multidimensional forms. Rejecting rigid categorization, Kincaid navigates both abstract and narrative modalities, exploring the expansiveness of perception and the body across spiritual, emotional and digital realms. Kincaid’s works are crafted across continents—from studios in St. Louis and Ghana—charting a transatlantic geography of self-exploration, resilience, and cultural continuity. Influenced by artists such as Anni Albers and Alma Thomas, and inspired by natural phenomena, meteorology and cosmic systems, Kincaid’s practice bridges ancestral traditions with contemporary aesthetics. The result is a visual cosmology that reflects both the terrestrial and the transcendent. Kincaid’s work has been exhibited nationwide and is held in numerous public and private collections.
Lamerol Gatewood is a renowned St. Louis–born multimedia artist, curator and cultural advocate based in Brooklyn, New York. Educated at Lindenwood University (BFA, Education) and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (MFA), Gatewood spent 25 years as a visual arts educator in the New York City Department of Education before retiring in 2012. His paintings, drawings and collages—rooted in quilt traditions, spiritual symbolism and rhythmic cultural languages—have been exhibited nationally and are held in major collections including the Saint Louis Art Museum, the African American Museum in Philadelphia and the Howard University Gallery of Art. Deeply connected to the legacy of the Black Artists Group (BAG), the St. Louis collective that transformed the region’s cultural landscape in the late 1960s and 1970s, Gatewood continues to advance African American visual culture through his studio and curatorial practice. He is currently co-curating Reimagining Landscapes, presented in 2026 at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo and the Wilmer Jennings Gallery in New York City.