Aerial view of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and Donald J. Hall Sculpture Park (photo by Don Ipock)
The best architecture makes us feel alive. The way designers shape materials and the space around people can produce a buoyant sensory engagement before we even think about it.
As The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art approaches its centennial in 2033, its leadership is focusing again on the importance of architecture and the ways it can not only enhance our connections to art and its many cultural treasures but also create community in the process.
In mid-March the museum will present possible visions of its future in an exhibit showcasing the work of six architectural teams vying to expand and redefine the built structures and landscape that make up the Nelson campus. In April, officials are expected to announce the winner of the design competition, which last fall attracted something like 182 entries from around the world.
It seems like only yesterday, but it was the late 1990s when the Nelson went through the process that concluded in 2007 with the opening of the extraordinary Bloch Building. Designed by Steven Holl Architects, the expansion was a radical response to the original Beaux Arts monument. The plan inserted underground what essentially is a skyscraper placed on its side topped with a series of glass-walled protrusions that provide light and magical spaces above and below.
The Nelson had already established and expanded the elegantly planned sculpture park on its grounds, a grand sweep of lawn and urban forest punctuated by Henry Moores, the Oldenburg-Van Bruggen “Shuttlecocks,” and the later additions of Roxy Paine’s stainless steel “Ferment,” Robert Morris’ transparent “Glass Labyrinth” and Andy Goldsworthy’s snaking “Walking Wall.”
The museum touts the way attendance has more than doubled in the last decade, and one might have concluded that every single one of those visitors joined the crowd on the last weekend of the recent Hokusai show in early January. So, yes, maybe the Nelson-Atkins is quite ready to grow again.
“Kansas City is on a roll,” CEO Julián Zugazagoitia said during a presentation of the six short-list architectural teams in December. Museum trustees are eager to make a stand for art, education and creative culture in the billowing enthusiastic aura that surrounds the city but so often seems so overly infatuated with the world of sports.
Unlike the city’s pro sports venues, we might remind ourselves, no one needs to buy a ticket to enter the Nelson, experience a few thousand years of cultural expression, and spark reverberations of wonder in young lives (and old) when it’s least expected.
The mission laid out for the prospective architects instructed that the Nelson was a “museum for all.” It also implied that the project should offer a holistic approach to knitting new spaces with old and consider how the museum campus presents itself to the neighborhoods and civic assets all around it.
Looking at the specified details, at least on the surface, the project doesn’t seem all that large, despite an announced projected budget of $160 million or more, all of it planned to come from private dollars. That preliminary number may prove to be far from the truth. By comparison, the total tab for the 2007 Bloch Building expansion, including extensive renovations to the original building and funding for subsequent activities, reached $360 million, according to the museum at the time (more than $545 million today).
The latest expansion specs include a projected 61,000 square feet of built space (compared with the Bloch at more than 150,000 square feet). The new facility would house a newly imagined center for photography to take greater advantage of the museum’s vast Hallmark Photographic Collection. Other elements would include exhibition galleries, a black-box theater, entry space, educational activities and an indoor-outdoor restaurant. In addition, the project would fund more infrastructure renovations in the 1933 building and will be expected to envision and reconnect the museum’s interior and exterior spaces into more of a flexible, inviting and organically enriching whole. That might be the tallest order. And wait, there’s more. In one word: Endowment. Whatever that figure proves to be, it will be substantial and in addition to the planning, design and construction budget.
Each of the architectural firms whose designs we’ll soon see appear to be both capable and extremely focused on bringing sophisticated visions and solutions. In their introductory presentations in December, during which they spoke about their firms and their related projects, most of the representatives had encouraging things to say about the potential for enhanced connectedness. As Kengo Kuma put it,
“Architecture is not a building, but a bridge between people, landscapes and art.”
The partners of one firm, Weiss/Manfredi of New York, reminded the Atkins Auditorium audience of their involvement more than a decade ago when they helped imagine the museum as the central force of a wider cultural district stretching from Troost Avenue to the Country Club Plaza, and from the Kansas City Art Institute to UMKC’s Volker Campus.
In addition to Kengo Kuma and Weiss/Manfredi, the impressive list of finalist firms represents the top tier of architectural achievement around the world: Studio Gang, Renzo Piano, Selldorf Architects and WHY. (Uncannily, I’ve experienced most of these firms’ museum work in recent travels, including Piano’s new and refreshing Museum of Contemporary Art in Istanbul, Gang’s astoundingly inventive expansion of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, WHY’s respectful addition to the Speed Museum in Louisville, and Selldorf’s gentle redo of a gallery space at the Neue Galerie in New York. Kengo Kuma’s new wing for the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon was two months away from opening and not viewable when I was there last summer.)
Representatives of several of the firms spoke of their use of collaborative planning projects, implying that the next Nelson-Atkins expansion can’t succeed without community conversations that would field ideas and conceptual buy-in from today’s generations and tomorrow’s.
Will those kinds of conversations be revived in the coming weeks as the public, the architecture selection committee and museum trustees begin to evaluate what the six firms propose to bring to the table? How much will Nelson-Atkins officials listen to the community outside their philanthropic bubble? What ultimately will define the project’s priorities?
This seems like a rare opportunity at a precarious moment in time — witness, for example, the rising assault on the humanities — to ensure that a reinvigoration of the Nelson-Atkins makes sense and will be well worth the investment. To pay for it, a capital campaign is envisioned to begin next year. With a major endowment poised to be part of the plan, expect an eye-popping goal.
Choosing an architect and promoting the winning plan, with all its attractions and all its promised contributions to the life of the city, will be key to selling the idea to the public.
What should we look for in these proposals? At least these three things: Inspired spaces that enhance the human moment. Opportunities for real and rewarding engagement with Kansas Citians and visitors from all over. And let’s not forget the museum’s ultimate missions of centering the experience of art in all its old, new and ever-evolving ways and, whenever we’re there, making us feel alive.
THREE THINGS
Under-appreciated fact: Some of our best jazz pianists possess formidable classical chops. The late Chick Corea deeply studied the music of Scriabin, the late Keith Jarrett made notable recordings of Bach, and just lately Jon Batiste has issued an album exploring the crossover appeal of Beethoven. Now comes Helen Sung, a highly accomplished jazz player who will return to her classical roots for the Folly Theater and Bach Aria Soloists. Sung will present a world premiere of her new major work, which is described as a multi-movement composition fusing Bach-inspired classicism with jazz improvisation. 7:30 p.m., April 5. follytheater.org.
Where do you start? Over more than half a century, Bonnie Raitt has built a winning pop-music career as an interpreter of blues, funk, rock and indelible tunes (start with John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery” for one) while slinging a hot guitar and creating a long list of her own heart-driven songs. See the moving and eternal “Just Like That” for one recent hit. Social activist, generous spirit, ever-rewarding performer, Raitt has struck me over all those decades as a kind of essential oasis, as rock’s warm embrace. I missed her last visit to town. Not this time. Catch her March 16 at the Midland Theater. midlandkc.com.
When it comes to books, Donna Seaman is a lifetime reader of the best kind. Curious, expansive, and art-oriented mind. Passionate about writing as a way of being. And immensely inspiring. (Full disclosure: I’ve counted her as a friend for many years.) Her day job is editor-in-chief of the American Library Association’s advance-review journal, Booklist. But that doesn’t begin to describe the wild, often rebellious life she has led as a reader, writer, critic, artist, event curator, teacher and more. You can learn all about it in her new memoir, “River of Books: A Life in Reading” (Ode Books), and hear her in person when she speaks at 7 p.m. April 3 at the Kansas City Art Institute’s Epperson Auditorium. Seaman, who lives in Chicago, undoubtedly will recount at least some of her experience as a KCAI student a few decades back. The event is free and open to the public.
