It has been a momentous couple of months for Kansas City’s cultural future, including the announcement of major expansion plans at two of its flagship institutions and the impending transformation of a major civic space.
Following an architectural competition that attracted nearly 200 architects from around the world, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s Architect Selection Committee chose WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism to design the museum’s upcoming expansion. The concept, which will be refined over the coming year, opens up the museum’s west side with an events and learning lobby along Oak Street opening out to a “Commons” space, new gateways and paths, and a new photography center.
At the University of Missouri, long deferred plans to expand and renovate its performing arts center have finally come to fruition under Conservatory Dean Courtney Crappell. In April the university announced plans for a 35,000-square-foot addition to the east side of the Olson Performing Arts Center, as seen in a concept rendering by Helix Architecture + Design, page 46. The addition, which will include more performance and rehearsal spaces, gives a nod to the Bloch Building at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, adding a unifying note to the area’s architectural appearance.
Downtown, Barney Allis Plaza is getting a facelift with the impending culmination of a plan to enliven the long-problematic site with a major artist-driven project. As Steve Paul reports in this issue’s “See Hear” column, the idea is to endow the area with “interactivity, delight and inherent magnetism” along the lines of Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate” at Chicago’s Millennium Park. The call for proposals attracted some international heavy-hitters, and the decision about who gets the gig is imminent.
At the magazine, we want to thank contributor Natasha Ria El-Scari for her series of “The Artist’s World” essays, steeped in her dual commitment to community and creativity. The current issue features her final column, “The Art of God.”
With this issue we also launch a new column, featuring the cultural meanderings of respected veteran writer José Faus, who kicks it off with a mouth-watering meditation on the food table as melting pot.
We also mourn. In the January/February 2025 issue of KC Studio we devoted our Artist Pages section to images from a new book, “Ode to Seed” by Kansas City artist Ke-Sook Lee. Lee knew it would be her last project — she succumbed to pancreatic cancer on April 13. (See page 30 for a tribute to Lee by her dear friend, contributing writer Elisabeth Kirsch.)
The seed’s journey represented Lee’s own, encompassing all the struggles, dreams, desires and ultimate triumph of Lee’s will to prevail as an artist and independent woman.
And, although the seed was a signature touchstone of her work, it was just one of a rich array of images and expressions she explored over the course of her career.
Many artists who find success with a certain body of work just stick with that and create variations that eventually run out of steam. Not Ke-Sook. In every show, she introduced new ideas and adapted her choice of materials to express them.
Hers was a dynamic evolution that responded to the pulse of the culture, particularly the challenges and obstacles facing women, which she continued, tirelessly, until her death.
