Hugh Merrill is an artist, educator, writer and community activist. In 1985 he had a solo exhibition at the Nelson Atkins Museum, and his work is collected in over 50 museums including the New York Museum of Modern Art, Kansas City Kemper Museum, Cranbrook Art Museum, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Poland National Museum of Poznan. He is a long time professor at the Kansas City Art Institute. In 1996, he collaborated with French artist Christian Boltanski on the city-wide community arts project Our City/Ourselves: Portrait of Community at the Kemper Museum. Hugh was the president of the Southern Graphics Council International from 199x to 199x. He developed Chameleon Arts and Youth Development as a resource for disenfranchised youth communities which provided over 1 million dollars for community arts and youth development programming during its 25 years. Merrill was selected as one of 42 international artists for Richard Noyce’s book Printmaking At the Edge published in 2006. Hugh has been awarded multiple grants including 2 NEA grants, Melon Foundation, Yaddo Fellowship, and the 2007 Distinguished Education Award from the Southern Graphics Council International. The Nelson Atkins Museum invited Hugh to curate Print Lovers at 30: Celebrating Three Decades of Giving in 2008. In September of 2010, his retrospective Divergent Consistencies was exhibited by the Leedy Voulkos Art Center.