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Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is located in Kansas City, Missouri
and well known for its neoclassical style architecture and the huge
Asian art works it houses. In 2007, TIME magazine ranked it as the
number 1 on the 10 Best (New and Upcoming) Architectural Marvels
list, in regard to their new Bloch Building. It was constructed on
the grounds of Oak Hill, the former home of the Kansas City Star
publisher, William Rockhill Nelson, who when he passed on in 1915,
stipulated that when his wife and daughter passed away, the proceeds
from his estate would be used to purchase artworks for the public's
enjoyment. About the same period, former school marm Mary Atkins;
who was the widow of real estate speculator James Burris Atkins,
left $300,000 to start an art museum, and by 1927, the amount had
grown to $700,000. Two different sets of plans were made for the two
similar requests, with the Atkins Museum being located in Penn
Valley Park, but after much consideration, they decided to join the
two bequests and add some smaller ones that they had gotten, and
create one single major art facility. The structure would be
designed by local well known and prestigious architects Wight and
Wight, who had done the approaches to the Liberty Memorial and the
Kansas governor's mansion, Cedar Crest. In 1930, they broke ground,
and the museum opened in December, 1933. Its classical beaux-arts
style was modeled after the Cleveland Museum of Art. By the time the
museum opened, it had cost $2.75 million to construct and the
dimensions of the six story building were 390 feet long by 175 feet
wide. It was called the Nelson Art Gallery or the Nelson Gallery,
was really two museums until 1983, when it formally became the
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Before that, the east wing was the
Atkins, and the west wing and lobby were called the William Rockhill
Nelson Gallery of Art. On the outside of the structure, Charles Keck
made 23 panels of limestone that showed the march of civilization
from east to west that included wagon trains going west from
Westport Landing. These is gorgeous grillwork in the doors that show
oak leaf motifs in memory of Oak Hill and an authentic recreation of
the wonderful Oak Hill library is on an upper level that has the
original wood paneling, pictures, books, rugs and floors. The
collections include European paintings, with works by Vincent van
Gogh, Caraviggio, Claude Monet, Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, Edgar
Degas, Petrus Christus, Gustave Caillebotte, El Greco, Peter Paul
Rubens, Guercino, Rembrandt, Alessandro Magnasco, Titian, Guiseppe
Bazzani, Giuliano Bugiardini, Corrado Giaquinto, Gaspare Traversi
and Cavalierie d'Arpino. In the Asian work, which are the most
prestigious and celebrated, there is a great amount of Asian art,
but especially those of the Imperial China, much of it bought before
the early 20th century by Laurence Sickman, a Harvard fellow in
China. It houses one of the finest collections of Chinese antique
furniture in the nation and besides the Chinese collection, there
are pieces from south Asia, Japan, southeast Asia, India, Korea,
Iran and Indonesia. In the American paintings collections, the
biggest collection open to the public of the works of Thomas Hart
Benton is held, with works by George Bellows, John Singer Sargent,
George Caleb Bingham, Winslow Homer, Frederic Church, Thomas Eakins
and John Singleton Copley. In 2006, Donald J. Hall, chairman of the
Hallmark Card company gave the museum the complete Hallmark
Photographic Collection that contained the history of photography
from 1839 to today. It is mostly American in scope, with works from
such great photographers like Cindy Sherman, Southworth & Hawes,
Andy Warhol, Carleton Watkins, Lee Friedlander, Timothy O'Sullivan,
Harry Callahan, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Homer Page, Alfred Stieglitz
and Dorothea Lange. On the exterior of the museum, on their
humongous lawn, the Kansas City Sculpture Park has the biggest
collection of monumental bronzes by Henry Moore in the country. It
also has works by George Segal, Alexander Calder, Mark di Suvero and
August Rodin. Beyond these, and the museum, actually pictured to the
right, are the famous Shuttlecocks, a four part outdoor sculpture of
huge badminton shuttlecocks by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van
Bruggen.
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