What’s In the Flat Files? New Exhibit Shares Rarely Seen Art

There’s a whole collection of art at Rockhurst University that rarely gets seen.

Of course, there is the Van Ackeren Collection of Religious Art, which makes up one half of the Greenlease Gallery. On the floor below that, though, is storage that includes what is known as “flat files” — primarily works on paper stored in cabinets. 

In a new exhibit that opens Thursday, the gallery will showcase some of those less-viewed pieces, which highlight connections between Rockhurst and the broader Kansas City art community and range from Medieval artifacts to contemporary works.

“From the F-Files: Selected Works from the Rockhurst Collection Flat Files” will open Thursday with a reception from 5-7 p.m. in the Greenlease Gallery on campus. It will be on view during the gallery’s regular hours — 1-5 p.m. Thursday through Sunday when the University’s courses are in session — through Dec. 6.

Poppy Di Candeloro, director of the Center for Arts and Letters and the Greenlease Gallery, said among the artists whose works will be exhibited are names that will be familiar to many in Kansas City and beyond, including Marc Chagall, Hugh Merrill and Kansas City Artist Coalition co-founder Philomene Bennett. Alongside those works are selections from Rockhurst students, faculty, and visiting artists from the past. There are playful, colorful prints; works by Robert Bailey, an emeritus professor of art at Rockhurst; a black and white hand-painted set of stations of the cross; contemporary pieces; and an illuminated manuscript that is several hundred years old.

Di Candeloro said the exhibition really began with an appraisal of the University’s art collection that she initiated shortly after arriving at Rockhurst in 2024.

“That appraisal document helped quite a bit, but we also dug into paper files and other records, and from there you start looking at things in the flat files and thinking, ‘OK, well what do I have?’” she said. “How do I balance some of the color and make things flow together?"

There are 112 pieces in Rockhurst’s flat files, which Di Candeloro and a gallery assistant, Carly Glaze, ’26, organized, and from which Di Candeloro selected what is on display. Together, they form a well-rounded collection that reveals a breadth of styles, subjects and mediums; the history of art at Rockhurst and its connection to the broader art scene in Kansas City; and connections between the works on display and the permanent collection of religious art in the adjoining gallery. It led to a fair amount of discovery and playfulness, with a diverse array of pieces forming some interesting narratives.

“That’s one of the things that I thought about a lot, and makes me really excited, is being able to find this history through this art — the students we’ve had who are now part of the arts in Kansas City, or artists who have exhibited here,” she said. “The Rockhurst collection does have a lot to offer.”