July 06, 2008 11:38 pm
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By Melissa Dunson
mdunson@joplinglobe.com
Taina Chapman, of Fairway, Kan., has never taken art history. She doesn’t know the difference between a Rembrandt and a Monet. Chapman is 6 years old.
Yet, the little girl spent part of last week touring some of the world’s great works of art — and enjoying it.
“I want to be an art teacher when I grow up,” Chapman said. “I like to make stuff out of stuff pretty much.”
Chapman was at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City with her class recently. She is part of a new generation the museum is reaching out to by including different types of art that appeal to different types of visitors.
The museum is also trying to incorporate art into the architecture to emphasize that art is an experience rather than an exercise solely of the intellect.
“We believe that a good society has to provide certain things to its citizens. Education is a big thing in our country,” said Marc Wilson, the museum’s director and chief executive officer. “But the same thing applies to art. Why should a citizen not have access to some of the greatest achievements in human history?”
Some of those achievements are on display at the Nelson-Atkins. Famed pieces include the oil painting “Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness” by Caravaggio; “The Thinker” by sculptor Auguste Rodin; an oil self-portrait by Rembrandt; part of Monet’s famed “Waterlilies” collection; and a large collection by Neosho-born artist Thomas Hart Benton.
With its newest addition, the Bloch Building, the Nelson-Atkins was named Time magazine’s building of the year for 2007. It ends up being one of the 10 largest encyclopedic (general) art museums in the world. It already has world-renowned collections of Asian art and photography, and, when some construction is done next year, it will have one of the largest collections of American Indian art.
Already this year, the museum has been featured on television in Spain and Japan, and in an Iranian newspaper. But it remains a secret for many in the Midwest.
“You can still find people even here in Kansas City who don’t know who we are, or where we are,” Wilson said. “You would be surprised. This museum may be more famous in Tokyo than it is in the U.S.”
Kelli Connelley, 23, of Wichita, just returned from a one-year European stay, and said she was surprised with the quality she found at the Nelson-Atkins during a visit last week.
More accessible
One way the museum has tried to be more accessible is by doing away with a fortress-like structure. The Nelson-Atkins has no main entrance, just seven smaller entrances scattered throughout the building. And a section of the museum’s art is outside in a 22-acre sculpture park.
The museum reopened seven years ago with free admission. That added significantly to the crowd, said the museum’s media representative Randy Attwood.
“Since we went free, we get a lot more diversity (in visitors),” Attwood said. “We see more of the ‘stroller crowd.’ Art is for everybody.”
Longtime museum docent Fran Brozman has been giving tours of the Nelson-Atkins for 22 years and said she’s almost as interested in its architecture as what’s hanging on its walls. With decorative “fluttering T” outcroppings on the ceiling, glass walls and floors made of everything from crushed glass to intricately pieced wood squares, Brozman said everything about the building is magical.
“The glass walls are lit from the inside and it makes you feel like you’re at Disney World,” she said.
The building is designed to break down the wall between art and visitor. It’s hard to tell where one exhibit ends and another begins, and some pieces are even put together in a collection not based on their places in a historic timeline or geography, but rather by the shared feeling or purpose behind them.
Brozman said the glass cases protecting the art in the new Bloch Building were designed by an Italian cabinet maker to make it look as if there is no separation between art and viewer.
Wilson said one of the museum’s main goals is to make art something that can be experienced. The museum uses architectural elements, lighting and decor to achieve that, he said.
“It’s about experience over art history,” Wilson said. “There is no straight line — you don’t have to follow a prescribed path. We want to give people lots of options, to go right or go left, because it’s going to be more meaningful to them then.”
The museum’s Chinese art exhibit pieces together large elements from different Hindu temples — a brightly painted wall, an intricately carved cedar roof and a red pillar gateway — to house representations of ancient Chinese deities. Low lighting adds to the ambiance and creates the feeling of being in a foreign place in a past time.
Another room incorporates more than a dozen stained-glass windows from medieval churches as actual windows in the room and includes a portion of an Augustinian church to house religious paintings and sculptures of the period.
“At the end of the day, the production of art is inherently human,” Wilson said. “It is one of the pursuits that defines us, separates us from other creatures on the planet. So, everybody can get with it.”
Advice for visitors
“People should be more casual with a museum — it’s not a mental safari,” Wilson said. “Go see a favorite, then promise yourself something new, and don’t overdo it.”
— Marc Wilson, director and chief executive officer of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City
$50 of fun
n Destination: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art..
n Directions: Take U.S. Highway 71 to Kansas City and then take the U.S. 56 West exit. Continue on as Highway 71 becomes Bruce R. Watkins Drive, turn left onto Brush Creek Boulevard/Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard. Turn right onto Oak Street and turn right into the underground parking garage.
n Address: 4525 Oak Street, Kansas City, MO 64111.
n Features: George Caleb Bingham’s “Fishing on the Mississippi” and “Canvassing for a Vote”; Thomas Hart Benton’s “Hollywood” and “Persephone”; and works by Titian, Poussin, Delacroix, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cezanne.
n Distance from Joplin: 154 miles.
n Cost of round-trip: Using a car that gets 30 miles per gallon and gasoline at $3.85 a gallon, the trip to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City costs around $40 in gas, plus $5 to park in the underground parking garage. There is free parking available within walking distance.
n Contact Information: (816) 751-1ART, or www.nelson-atkins.org.
n Hours: Tuesday and Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Thursdays and Fridays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.
Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.
Photos
Globe/Roger Nomer
Sydni William and Wyatt Pearlman are dwarfed by a sculpture of a shuttlecock on the lawn of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.