Every September, artists and visitors return to the Country Club Plaza for two very different celebrations of art. The Brush Creek Artwalk brings painters outdoors to interpret the city around them, followed a week later by the Plaza Art Fair, which fills nine city blocks with artists from across the country.
In 2026, the Brush Creek Art Walk takes place September 18–20, followed by the Plaza Art Fair September 25–27.
But art is already part of the landscape they come to see.
Along Brush Creek, fountains rise from the water, while sculpture and architecture help shape the character of the surrounding Plaza. The creek itself carries a history that helps explain why this stretch of Kansas City looks the way it does today.
The Flood That Changed Brush Creek
On September 12, 1977, intense rainfall overwhelmed streams throughout the Kansas City area. Brush Creek rose dramatically, flooding businesses on the Country Club Plaza with five to six feet of water in some locations. Twenty-five people died across the metropolitan area.
The disaster became a turning point for Brush Creek.
In the years that followed, civic leaders pursued major flood-control improvements along the creek. Work beginning in the early 1990s reshaped the corridor through the Plaza, addressing flooding while also changing the appearance and use of the waterway.
Much of that history is easy to miss today.
Visitors walking along Brush Creek are more likely to notice the fountains and landscaped surroundings than the engineering decisions behind them. Yet the setting they see grew in part from a decades-long effort to make the creek safer and more functional.
The Brush Creek Fountains
The three large geyser fountains along Brush Creek were installed in 1998 as part of improvements to the creek through the Country Club Plaza.
One is located near the gondola dock at Ward Parkway and Wyandotte Street. Another sits east of Ward Parkway and Baltimore Avenue. The third is between Brookside Boulevard and Oak Street.
Today, the fountains are familiar features of the Plaza, but their placement is connected to the larger transformation of Brush Creek.
Other improvements included circulation pumps and aerator fountains designed to improve water quality. Together, these projects addressed practical problems while helping reshape Brush Creek into the public space visitors recognize today.
The Plaza as a Work of Art
The Country Club Plaza has long been a place where architecture and public art contribute to the character of the district.
That setting helps explain why artists continue to return. There is no single view that defines the Plaza. Walk a few blocks and the scene changes, giving artists a different way to interpret a place familiar to generations of Kansas Citians.
The Plaza Art Fair and Brush Creek Art Walk do not simply bring art into the district. They take place in a setting where art has already been part of the experience for decades.
A Sculpture Along the Creek
A short distance from the fountains sits Married Love, Oscar Nemon’s bronze sculpture of Winston and Clementine Churchill seated together on a garden bench.
The sculpture was commissioned by Mr. and Mrs. Miller Nichols specifically for its Country Club Plaza location and dedicated in 1984. Nemon had known Winston Churchill for approximately 30 years and had previously created a smaller version of the sculpture for Blenheim Palace, Churchill’s birthplace.
That personal connection adds another dimension to a work many people pass without knowing its story. Nemon was not simply depicting a famous couple. He knew Churchill personally, and the sculpture was created for a particular place within the Plaza.
Together, the fountains and sculpture show how public art has become woven into the everyday experience of this part of Kansas City.
Artists Return to the Plaza
Each September, artists add another layer to that history.
The Brush Creek Art Walk opens Friday, September 18 with the “Nocturne at the Mill Creek Park Fountain.” Beginning at 6 p.m., artists will paint around one of Kansas City’s best-known fountains while visitors enjoy live music. Artists turn in their work at 9:30 p.m. for judging and off-the-easel sales.
A week later, the Plaza Art Fair brings artists and visitors together throughout the Country Club Plaza. Now in its 95th year, the event continues one of Kansas City’s longest-running cultural traditions.
For a few weeks each September, contemporary artists become part of a setting that has been shaped by public art for generations.
Looking at Brush Creek Differently
Brush Creek tells a layered story.
A devastating flood forced Kansas City to reconsider the creek. Flood-control and water-quality projects changed its physical form. Fountains became part of the redesigned landscape, while sculpture became part of the surrounding public space. Today, artists continue to find new ways to interpret what is already here.
That is what makes September such a fitting time to look at Brush Creek again.
Visitors may come to the Plaza to see artists at work, but the art does not begin when an easel is set up or an event opens.
It is already here—in the fountains, sculpture and public spaces that have developed along the creek over decades.
This September, take a closer look at the Brush Creek Fountains and Married Love, and see a familiar part of Kansas City from a different perspective.