The Waiting Room is a 5,000 sqft. art space, founded by David Lieffring & SK Reed in the basement of the old Holsum Warehouse building located at 1106 Santa Fe St. in the West Bottoms district of Kansas City, MO. David and SK, two partners who have always wanted to run an art space, are taking on this new endeavor! The Waiting Room, which is currently under construction, will consist of five art studios and a gallery opening February 1, 2025.

The gallery is a continuation of a space formerly known as Beco Gallery, founded in 1999 by Rebecca Ederer and Collette Keenan as part of their business Beco Flowers. In 2022 Beco Gallery lost its 23 year old location in the Crossroads Arts District in Kansas City due to doubling rent prices. The flower shop continues in a new crossroads location, yet no longer houses a gallery.

After losing the physical location, Beco Gallery continued under SK Reed’s curation. SK curated 10 off-site exhibitions, thanks to the generosity of other spaces around Kansas City including Bunker Center for the Arts, Smalter Gallery, Kiosk Gallery, and Purple Window Gallery in Chicago.

Beco had two exhibitions at an office building in Kansas City, KS which had a reception desk. We named this space The Waiting Room. Although this location was short-term, the name stuck, speaking to the temporariness of art spaces in our current climate, despite your best efforts it can be hard to predict the length of time you might have with a specific building. The name feels full of other meanings, a reference to moments of transition, of hope or anxiety, a kind of longing without clarity.

Now that we have a physical location again— a new name feels right for such a big change! None of this would have been possible without those who carved out space for Beco Gallery, the founders who built a flower business and gave a portion of their space for the arts, the curators who invested their time and energy to bring artists and programming into the space, the artists who brought their ideas and hard work into the space, and lastly the amazing community who showed up and supported this space. As The Waiting Room continues we carry all of this history with us. We can't wait to see how Beco Gallery, now The Waiting Room, will continue to evolve in our new location.

Joining the curatorial team is Lily Erb! Lily & SK began working together in 2023. Lily applied to Beco's Open Call and was curated into an off-site exhibition, "Disconcerting Present... or was that a dream?" at The Bunker. With many shared interests, Lily & SK began co-curating, Queer Ecologies, a group exhibition scheduled for this February, 2025 at Purple Window Gallery in Chicago, IL. The curatorial duo can’t wait to break ground on our first project in our new gallery location!