The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, known for its encyclopedic collection of art from nearly every continent and culture, and especially for its extensive collection of Asian art.
In 2007, Time magazine ranked the museum's new Bloch Building number one on its list of "The 10 Best (New and Upcoming) Architectural Marvels" which considered candidates from around the globe.
The museum is open five days a week: Monday from 10 am-5 pm, closed Tuesday and Wednesday, open Thursday 10-9, Friday 10-9, Saturday and Sunday 10-5. Admission is free.
History
The museum was built on the grounds of Oak Hall, the home of Kansas City Star publisher William Rockhill Nelson (1841–1915). 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. This bequest was augmented by additional funds from the estates of Nelson's daughter, son-in-law and attorney.
In 1911, former schoolteacher Mary McAfee Atkins (1836–1911), widow of real estate speculator James Burris Atkins, bequeathed $300,000 to establish an art museum. Through sound management of the estate and a booming economy in the Roaring Twenties, this amount grew to $700,000 by 1927. Original plans called for two art museums based on the separate bequests (with the Atkins Museum to be located in Penn Valley Park). However, trustees of the two estates decided to combine the two bequests along with smaller bequests from others to make a single major art institution.
The building was designed by prominent Kansas City architects Wight and Wight, who also designed the approaches to the Liberty Memorial and the Kansas governor's mansion, Cedar Crest. Ground was broken in July 1930, and the museum opened December 11, 1933. The building's classical Beaux-Arts architecture style was modeled on the Cleveland Museum of Art. Thomas Wight, the brother who did most of the design work for the building said:
We are building the museum on classic principles because they have been proved by the centuries. A distinctly American principle appropriate for such a building may be developed, but, so far, everything of that kind is experimental. One doesn't experiment with two-and-a-half million dollars.
When the original building opened, its final cost was $2.75 million (about $54 million in 2018). The dimensions of the six-story structure were long by wide, making it larger than the Cleveland Museum of Art.
The museum, which was locally referred to as the Nelson Art Gallery or simply the Nelson Gallery, was actually two museums until 1983 when it was formally named the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Previously the east wing was called the Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, while the west wing and lobby was called the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art.
On the exterior of the building Charles Keck created 23 limestone panels depicting the march of civilization from east to west including wagon trains heading west from Westport Landing. Grillwork in the doors depict oak leaf motifs in memory of Oak Hall. The south facade of the museum is an iconic structure in Kansas City that looms over a series of terraces onto Brush Creek.
About the same time as the construction of the museum, Howard Vanderslice donated to the west of the museum, across Oak Street, for the Kansas City Art Institute, which moved from the Deardorf Building at 11th and Main streets in downtown Kansas City.
As William Nelson, the major contributor, donated money rather than a personal art collection, the curators were able to assemble a collection from scratch. At the height of the Great Depression, the worldwide art market was flooded with pieces for sale, but there were very few buyers. As such, the museum's buyers found a vast market open to them. The acquisitions grew quickly and within a short time, the Nelson-Atkins had one of the largest art collections in the country.
One of the original components of the building was a re-creation of Nelson's oak paneled room from Oak Hall (and namesake of the estate). The room contained Nelson's red plush easy chair and bookcases. The room was dismantled in 1988 to make way for a photography studio.
One-third of the building on the first and second floors of the west wing were left unfinished when the building opened to allow for future expansion. Part was completed in 1941 to house Chinese painting and the remainder of the building was completed after World War II. In 1993 Michael Churchman wrote a history of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, High Ideals and Aspirations.
Directors
Paul Gardner, 1933–1953 The museum had four Directors before Julián Zugazagoitia's appointment in 2010; the first was Paul Gardner (1894–1972). A native of Massachusetts, Gardner graduated from MIT in 1917 with a degree in architecture. He served with distinction in WWI, after which he traveled in Europe and North Africa for a year. In about 1919 he became a dancer with Anna Pavlova's Ballet Company under the name Paul Tchernikoff. Gardner eventually went back to graduate school, earning a master's in European history from George Washington University in 1928 and then enrolling in the doctoral program in art history at Harvard. In March 1932 the cautious Trustees of the Nelson Art Gallery, hesitant about naming a full-fledged Director, appointed the graduate student as their assistant on a trial basis. Gardner took to the new position at once, and so was named by the Trustees as Director eighteen months later, on September 1, 1933. He would serve for the next twenty years.
Gardner served in the US Army during the Italian campaign of World War II in the rank of major. He was appointed head of the Fine Arts and Education Department of the Allied Military Government in occupied Italy.
Ethylene Jackson, 1942–1945 Ethylene Jackson (1907–1993), Paul Gardner's executive secretary since 1933, became acting director in November 1942 when Gardner was commissioned a major in the United States Army. Besides her role as executive secretary to the Director, Jackson had served as curator of the decorative arts collection. Paul Gardner served as a Monuments Man in Europe, returning to the Nelson in December 1945. Ethylene Jackson left Kansas City for New York City the following year after marrying art dealer Germain Seligman.
Laurence Sickman, 1953–1977 Upon Paul Gardner's retirement on May 1, 1953, Laurence Sickman (1907–1988) became the Gallery's second Director. He had been associated with the Gallery since 1931.
Laurence Sickman, a native of Denver, Colorado, had become interested in Japanese and Chinese art as a high school student. After two years at the University of Colorado he transferred to Harvard, where he studied with Langdon Warner. He also became fluent in Chinese. After graduating with a B.A. in 1930 Sickman traveled to China on a Harvard-Yenching scholarship. There he reconnected with Warner, who was by then in China, under assignment to buy art for the museum Trustees. Warner recommended to the Trustees that the young graduate student assume the responsibility of negotiating art purchases for the Gallery, as Warner was moving to Japan. Sickman's acumen as a collector earned him the respect of the Trustees, who sent him thousands of dollars with which to buy art. Since he was on a scholarship, his expertise cost the Trustees nothing. He made the 6,000-mile journey to Kansas City in December 1933 for the opening of the Gallery, then returned to China. Returning once more to the United States, he was made the Gallery's Curator of Oriental Art in 1935. By 1941, Sickman's purchases of Chinese art had given the Nelson Gallery one of the best Asian collections in the United States.
Sickman, like Paul Gardner, was commissioned as an officer in the United States Army as a member of the Monuments Men, serving from 1942 to 1945 in England, India, and China. In his absence, his very capable assistant, Miss Lindsay Hughes, was appointed acting Curator. Sickman returned to his curatorial role after the war; eight years later he was named Director. Among the many successes of his tenure, the most important was the major exhibition "Archaeological Finds of the People's Republic of China", which ran from April 20-June 8, 1975 and attracted about 280,000 visitors. The exhibition of 385 pieces was a result of the détente between the United States and Communist China that Richard Nixon's 1972 trip to that country had begun. This was a professional and personal coup for Sickman: his reputation as a scholar and the collection he had built at the Nelson Gallery made Kansas City one of only four cities the exhibition would visit, after Paris, Toronto, and Washington, D.C. Laurence Sickman retired on January 31, 1977, and was named Director Emeritus and advisor to the Trustees.
Ted Coe, 1977–1982 On Laurence Sickman's retirement, Ralph Tracy "Ted" Coe (1929–2010) became the Gallery's third Director. Coe was a native of Cleveland, where his father, a steel manufacturer, was an art collector. The recipient of a bachelor's degree in art history from Oberlin College and a master's in architecture from Yale, he had worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. before coming to the Nelson Gallery in 1959 as Curator of Painting and Sculpture. While a curator, Coe organized several large and well-attended special exhibitions. The most influential was "Sacred Circles", an exhibition of 900 Native American art objects. Organized to commemorate the American Bicentennial, the show opened at the Hayward Gallery in London, England, running from October 1976 to January 1977. Financial support was quickly organized in Kansas City to make the Nelson Gallery the only American venue. "Sacred Circles" was the second most popular exhibition after the Chinese show of 1975, running from April 16-June 19, 1977, and drawing more than 245,000 visitors. Ted Coe requested a sabbatical from his duties as Director in March 1982 and resigned at the end of June, having worked at the Nelson for 23 years, including years as Director.
Marc Wilson, 1982–2010 Ted Coe was succeeded by Marc Wilson, who served from 1982 to 2010.
Julián Zugazagoitia, 2010– On September 1, 2010, Julián Zugazagoitia (b. 1964) became the museum's fifth Director. Zugazagoita native of Mexico City, Mexco Zugazagoitia had previously served for seven years as the Director and CEO of El Museo del Barrio in New York City.
Bloch Building addition
In 1993, the museum began to consider the first expansion plans since the completion of the unfinished areas in the 1940s. Plans called for a 55 percent increase in space and were finalized in 1999.
Architect Steven Holl won an international competition in 1999 for the design of the addition. Holl's concept, conceived and realized with Design Partner Chris McVoy, was to build five glass pavilions to the east of the original building which they call lenses. The lenses top a underground building known as the Bloch Building. It is named after the H&R Block co-founder Henry W. Bloch. The Bloch building houses the museum's contemporary, African, photography, and special exhibitions galleries as well a new cafe, the museum's Spencer Art Reference Library, and the Isamu Noguchi Sculpture Court. The addition cost approximately $95 million and opened June 9, 2007. It was part of $200 million in renovations to the museum that included the Ford Learning Center which is home to classes, workshops, and resources for students and educators. It opened in fall of 2005.