Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is the preeminent art museum in both Kansas City, Missouri and in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. It is considered one of the finest art collections in the United States.

1 History
2 Bloch Building Addition
3 Collections
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

Kansas City Star publisher William Rockhill Nelson was dissatisfied with Kansas City's cultural atmosphere. [1] When he died in 1915, his will provided that upon the deaths of his wife and daughter, the proceeds of his entire estate would go to purchasing artwork for public enjoyment. Around the same time, miserly former schoolteacher Mary Atkins bequested $300,000 to the city to establish an art museum. Combined with other, similar bequests, Kansas City had enough money and resources to establish and amass a viable art collection.

Designed by prominent Kansas City architects Wight and Wight, ground was broken on the present site of the museum in 1930, and it first opened in 1933. The building's classical Beaux-Arts architecture style, resembling Berlin's Altes Museum, is a beloved standard of the Kansas City architectural landscape. Being the height of the Great Depression, the worldwide art market was flooded with pieces for sale, but very few buyers. As such, the museum's buyers found a vast market open to them. Armed with these resources, the acquisitions grew quickly. Within very little time, the Nelson-Atkins had one of the most sizeable art collections in the country.

From 1954 through 2000, the Jewel Ball, Kansas City's debutante ball, took place every June in the main hall. The ball has always benefited both the museum and the Kansas City Symphony.

[edit] Bloch Building Addition

Bloch Addition at night

In 1993, leaders of the Nelson-Atkins took a moment to reflect on the first 60 years of the Museum’s history. One thing that was clear was the Museum’s dedication to being a vital partner to the community of Kansas City. With this dedication in mind, the Museum reached out to its neighbors and civic leaders to ask how the institution could improve. The response was a desire for more space and more programs.

The solution to this problem was construction of an addition, designed by world-renowned architect Steven Holl. Beating out a list of six finalists in an international competition in 1999, was Holl's concept of the 5 lenses of light that float above the landscape. The 165,000 square-foot Bloch building (named for H&R Block co-founder Henry W. Bloch is the first addition to the original building since 1933 and will house the museum's contemporary, African, photography, and special exhibitions galleries; as well a new cafe, the museum's reference library, and the Isamu Noguchi Sculpture Court. The addition, scheduled to open June 9th 2007, joins a host of other improvements to the Museum including the Ford Learning Center, home to classes, workshops, and resources for students and educators which opened in fall of 2005.

[edit] Collections

[edit] European painting

John the Baptist (John in the Wilderness), by Caravaggio, one of the works in the Nelson-Atkins's European painting collection

The museum's European painting collection is also highly-prized. It include works by Caravaggio, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Petrus Christus, El Greco, Guercino, Titian, Rembrandt, Peter Paul Rubens, as well as Impressionists Gustave Caillebotte, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh, among others.

[edit] Asia

The museum is distinguished (and widely celebrated) for its extensive collection of Asian art, especially that of Imperial China. Most of it was purchased for the museum in the early 20th century by Laurence Sickman, then a Harvard fellow in China. In addition to Chinese art, the collection includes pieces from Japan, India, Iran, Indonesia, Korea, and Southeast, and South Asia.

[edit] American painting

The American painting collection includes the largest collection open to the public of works by Thomas Hart Benton, who lived in Kansas City. Among its collection are masterpieces by George Bellows, George Caleb Bingham, Frederic Church, John Singleton Copley, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, and John Singer Sargent.

[edit] Photography

In 2006, Hallmark Cards chairman Donald J. Hall, Sr., donated the entire Hallmark Photographic Collection, spanning the history of photography from 1839 to the present day. It is primarily American in focus, and includes works from photographers such as Southworth & Hawes, Carleton Watkins, Timothy O'Sullivan, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Alfred Stieglitz, Dorothea Lange, Harry Callahan, Lee Friedlander, Andy Warhol, and Cindy Sherman, among others.

[edit] Kansas City Sculpture Park

One of the outdoor steel sculpture of badminton shuttlecocks by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.

Outside on the museum's immense lawn, the Kansas City Sculpture Park contains the largest collection of "monumental bronzes" by Henry Moore in the United States. The park also includes works by Alexander Calder, Auguste Rodin, George Segal and Mark di Suvero, among others. Beyond these, the park (and the museum itself) is well known for Shuttlecocks, a four-part outdoor steel sculpture of badminton shuttlecocks by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.

[edit] Other

In addition, the museum also has collections of European and American sculpture, decorative arts and works on paper, Egyptian art, Greek and Roman art, modern and contemporary paintings and sculpture, pre-Columbian art, and the art of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. As well, the museum houses a major collection of English pottery and another of miniature paintings.