History

It began as a conversation in a San Francisco arts venue in 2003. From disparate backgrounds, Paulo Acosta Cabezas, an entrepreneur originally from Central America, and Cara Megan Lewis, a visual artist with roots in the Midwestern United States, met on common ground through a shared interest in communicating ideas and sharing human stories through art exhibitions. In May 2004, Paulo opened Mamá Art Cafe and invited Cara Megan to contribute her skills to his exhibition program. She accepted the opportunity and has worked for his company for the last 4 years. Simultaneously, she continued to work at Fraenkel Gallery as a registrar and later went on to complete her Master's Degree in Curatorial Practice from the California College of the Arts.

Paulo often refers to the San Francisco venue as a laboratory, a space to cultivate a working relationship with his friends and family and explore the outcomes of this effort through the business of spices and coffee. Combining seemingly unrelated items, he brought together spices, coffee, and art. Coffee and spices are not only two of the oldest luxury items ever traded and formed the economic backbone of numerous ancient civilizations, but both also contribute to the basic building blocks of culture, food and drink. Communities form around food and the traditions and patterns surrounding cuisine. If a country's food, a basic necessity, is at the bottom of a country's cultural pyramid, fine art is at the top, being the ultimate expression of a country's political, social, economic and natural landscape.

Since the opening of Mamá Art Cafe, Paulo has exhibited the work of dozens of artists and has welcomed hundreds of musicians to perform. This cultural program, which fostered local artists’ practices and introduced a local audience to talent from Latin America, built a foundation from which Cara and Cabezas Contemporary would come into being. Kansas City was chosen as the location of the new gallery, first because it is Cara Megan’s hometown and secondly because it is a city rich in cultural history with growing support for artistic production. Just as Kansas City and San Francisco have been historically important intersections for the arts, where cultures have commingled to create new practices, Cara and Cabezas Contemporary aims to become a crossroads for art from Latin America and the United States.