Meet the Past features Library Director Crosby Kemper III interviewing prominent historical figures (as portrayed by veteran Chautauqua performers) with Kansas City-area connections. On Tuesday, July 14, at 6:30 p.m., Doug Mishler portrays Thomas Hart Benton, the Missouri-born artist famous for his paintings showing ordinary people doing common things. Born on April 15, 1889, in Neosho, Missouri, Benton drew and painted portraits, landscapes and scenes of people at work on farms, in factories, and in busy cities. Some of his best-known works are public murals. He eventually became the leader of a movement in American art known as regionalism. He spent much of his life in Kansas City and during the 1930s he taught at the Kansas City Art Institute.
