Placements, exhibitions, and milestones — on the record.
Kevin Demery’s A Lesson Before Dying (2024) has entered the permanent collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art — accession 2025.61.1-28.
The 66 × 36 in. assemblage — MDF, acrylic, pinewood, chain, steel butterflies, bells, garden hooks, and windchime — is the foundation’s second placement with the Nelson-Atkins, following Cesar Lopez’s Structural Coupling: Sequence (2023).
Demery (b. 1992, Modesto, CA; BFA California College of the Arts; MFA School of the Art Institute of Chicago) is Assistant Professor of Foundation at the Kansas City Art Institute, a 2024 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Award recipient, and exhibits with Sakhile&Me in Frankfurt.
Credit line: “Gift of Major Dwight Oran Smith (U.S. Army Retired)”
The SMITH FAMILY FOUNDATION MMXXV is now a federally recognized 501(c)(3) public charity — 509(a)(2) — effective December 11, 2025, EIN 41-4033883. The foundation’s mission: to cultivate artists — aware of themselves, relentless in seeking, and fearless in becoming.
More announcements to come.