Art & Concert Finale Event for Missouri Bicentennial

The public is invited for a free concert and art event hosted by the State Historical Society of Missouri to conclude Missouri’s bicentennial year.

Missouri Celebrated: Commemorating 200 Years of Missouri Music, Culture, and Art will be held Tuesday, Dec. 14, from 4-7 p.m. at the Center for Missouri Studies, 605 Elm St., Columbia. The program includes a 30-minute, multimedia concert performed by Columbia Chamber Choir, a curated tour of artwork, objects and imagery at the time Missouri entered the United States, and the display of the Missouri Bicentennial Quilt that will begin its final exhibition in mid-Missouri for the bicentennial.

Presented in partnership with the Missouri 2021 Bicentennial Commission and the State Historical Society of Missouri, the Columbia Chamber Choir, under the direction of Emily Edgington Andrews and Nathan Lange, will honor Missouri composers, poets and artists in a unique concert with stunning photography of the state selected for My Missouri 2021 Photo Exhibition. Special to the program is a world premiere musical composition by award-winning Missouri composer Hans Bridger Heruth as a tribute to the bicentennial. The concert begins at 6 p.m.

A pre-concert reception, from 4-6 p.m., features the opening exhibition of the Missouri Bicentennial Quilt, on display at the Center for Missouri Studies through Jan. 28, 2022. The quilt is made up of blocks representing all 114 Missouri counties and the independent City of St. Louis, designed by quilters from or associated with each county. The Missouri Bicentennial Quilt has been touring the state since 2020. The exhibition will be extended into 2022 at State Historical Society of Missouri research centers in Columbia, St. Louis, Cape Girardeau, Rolla, Springfield and Kansas City, before it goes on a long-term loan display at the Missouri Quilt Museum in Hamilton in the fall of 2022.

Also, from 4-6 p.m., visitors can take part in a curator-led tour of Cultural Crossroads: Missouri in the Era of Statehood at the SHSMO Art Gallery with artworks and objects from the time of Missouri statehood. In addition, attendees can experience the virtual reality exhibit Missouri: Heart of the Nation, a collection of 98 paintings from the 1940s, developed by students and faculty at MU College of Engineering Information Technology and Museum of Art & Archeology as a project of the Missouri bicentennial.

Richard Bookstore, inside the Center for Missouri Studies, will also be open before the concert, with Missouri gift items for sale including recently-published books on Missouri to commemorate the 200 years of statehood.