The entryway’s Bigfoot at the Kansas City exhibition was photographed by Professor Hex.

On Sunday, December 24, 2006, The Kansas City Star art critic Alice Thorson has produced a list for her “Year in Review: 10 Highlights in Visual Arts.” Entitled “Wise Visions, Decisions: These artists and institutions made a difference to KC in 2006,” Thornson writes:

We close 2006 with visual arts kudos to 10 individuals and institutions that this year demonstrated vision, backbone and generosity.

Out of Thorson’s list of 10, she has noted the exhibition “Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place Scale” as number 3:

Animal magnetism: Raechell Smith, director, H&R Block Artspace

During its October to December run, the ambitious multimedia exhibit “Cryptozoology” at the Kansas City Art Institute’s Block Artspace was the talk of the town. Stocked with images and effigies of extinct and invented critters, the show struck the perfect balance between fun and thought-provoking.

Block Artspace director Raechell Smith, co-curator of the show with Bates College Museum of Art director Mark H.C. Bessire, reports that groups of young law enforcement guys in black T-shirts twice stopped by to have their picture taken with the exhibit’s 8-foot-high Bigfoot. The exhibit offered provocative commentary on the human/nature relationship. It also introduced Kansas Citians to artists such as Mark Dion, Joan Fontcuberta and Jeffrey Vallance.

The caption with the column’s Jim Barcus photograph (above) reads:

Visitors to the recent “Cryptozoology” exhibit at Block Artspace could pose with this 8-foot-high effigy of Bigfoot and ponder serious questions about the human/nature relationship.