The New York Times Spends Sunday at 18th & Vine
“36 Hours in Kansas City, Mo.” · The New York Times · October 22, 2026
The New York Times’ “36 Hours” travel series published its Kansas City weekend on October 22. Debra Kamin wrote it and Anna Petrow took the photographs. The American Jazz Museum is on the itinerary: Sunday, at noon.
What the Times wrote
Ms. Kamin’s opening paragraph names the 18th & Vine District, where Kansas City jazz grew up in the 1920s and ’30s. In her “Key stops” box, the first recommendation is the American Jazz Museum and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, side by side.
Her Sunday noon stop calls 18th & Vine a cornerstone of Black culture in Kansas City and one of the most important places in the country for African American music and sports history. She calls the museum “gorgeous, interactive and easy-to-explore,” a look at how the stories of jazz and Kansas City run together. Then she walks readers next door to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
Ms. Petrow’s photograph of our galleries, with the Louis Armstrong display in it, runs with that stop.
Read “36 Hours in Kansas City, Mo.” in The New York Times →
Thank you to Ms. Kamin and Ms. Petrow.
Make the same trip
Follow the Times’ itinerary: the museum opens at noon on Sundays, and you have until 5 to walk the galleries. Admission is $15 for adults and free for members. The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is next door, in the same complex.
The Blue Room is a working jazz club inside the museum, with live shows on Friday and Saturday nights, a Friday happy-hour set, noon shows on the first and second Thursdays, and a jam session on Monday nights.
Park in the lots behind the museum (enter E 17th Terrace from The Paseo) or in the Jazz District lot on The Paseo.
The American Jazz Museum · 1616 E 18th St, Kansas City, MO 64108
Hours, tickets, and membership: americanjazzmuseum.org/visit