The remarkable new Bloch Building - the much-anticipated expansion of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art - will open to the public on Saturday, June 9. The new building was designed by renowned architect Steven Holl, who offered the plan as a daring solution to the Nelson- Atkins' need for more space. The slender, elongated building runs along the eastern edge of the campus and provides a delicate counterpoint to the original 1933 Beaux-Arts building. Five lenses constructed of twin layers of glass walls emerge from the ground and create a luminous, undulating interplay between architecture and landscape.
The Bloch Building is the centerpiece of a dramatic transformation of the entire institution that includes major renovations to the original building, a restoration of the Kansas City Sculpture Park, and a complete reinstallation of the permanent galleries, drawing from the more than 34,500 works in its encyclopedic collection. The new 165,000-square-foot expansion increases Museum space by more than 70 percent and features five distinct levels of expansive, light-filled galleries. Visitors will find a new main lobby, Museum Store, Museum Café and Spencer Art Reference Library. The project has received strong support from the community, with more than $200 million raised for the renovation and expansion and $170 million raised to grow the endowment fund.
"The completion of this amazing transformation is an aesthetic and programmatic achievement, both for the Nelson-Atkins and for the entire community of Kansas City, which has supported us enormously through this process," said Marc F. Wilson, Menefee D. and Mary Louise Blackwell Director/CEO of the Museum. "With a world-class building, never-before-seen works in our special exhibitions, and rejuvenated permanent collection galleries, we can't wait to welcome visitors from all over to experience the new Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art."
The new Bloch Building is part of a bold strategic plan to greatly increase the Museum's role in the community and region, with a continued commitment to keep admission free every day for all visitors. The overall vision includes expanded programming, an increase in studio classrooms and educational resources, and a strengthened endowment that supports those initiatives.
Selected through an international juried competition, Steven Holl was awarded the commission for the new building in 1999. His proposed design for the Museum was an imaginative and unexpected solution to the institution's needs, balancing innovation with respect for the beloved Nelson-Atkins Building. In his proposal, Holl connected the original and new buildings and offered a line of galleries and public spaces interlaced with the landscape, opening, rising and descending along the east edge of the Sculpture Park lawn. His design became the clear choice for its architectural achievement as well as its physical expression of the Nelson-Atkins' mission and philosophy.
The Bloch Building Design Overview
The centerpiece of the campus transformation is the new Bloch Building, named in honor of Henry W. Bloch, co-founder of H&R Block and chairman of the Nelson-Atkins' Board of Trustees, and his wife Marion. The extension connects to the eastern end of the 1933 building and runs 840 feet along the edge of the Museum's Sculpture Park. While respecting the earlier architecture and the community's wishes to retain the integrity of the iconic silhouette, the Bloch Building's subdued architectural statement remains innovative and adds a strikingly contemporary note to the Museum campus.
The five lenses, actually twin layers of glass walls, emerge from the ground and create a dynamic interaction between architecture and landscape, inside and outside, translucence and opacity, tranquility and energy. The scheme also creates unique spaces for particular works of art, with a court dedicated to the Museum's significant holdings of Isamu Noguchi sculptures and an entry plaza and reflecting pool designed by Holl to contain a specially commissioned piece by installation artist Walter de Maria.
At the northernmost end of the campus, the translucent upper section of the Bloch Building will house the new main lobby for the Museum, as well as public spaces such as the café, art library and Museum store, and office and support spaces for the staff. Visitors may enter from a new underground parking facility, through a connecting gallery in the Nelson-Atkins Building, or from an elegant entry plaza, bordered by the Nelson- Atkins on one side, and the Bloch on the other. Featuring de Maria's elegant One Sun /34 Moons, a sitespecific work within a reflecting pool, the plaza unites the two buildings as their silhouettes are reflected in the surface of the shallow water.
From the lobby, visitors will descend through five distinct levels of galleries that invite a lively interaction between art and architecture. A main artery along the western edge of the building allows visitors to choose a straight path toward the building's southern end, entering individual galleries at various points along the way. Or, visitors can enter the first gallery from the lobby and continue to move southward on a sinuous, flowing path of stairs and ramps from one gallery to the next. The galleries drop in harmony with the slope of the 22-acre Sculpture Park. Conversely, as each gallery level steps down, the ceiling of that level peaks with a glass-enclosed lens that rises above ground level. By day, sunlight is reflected into galleries below. At night, gallery lights will glow softly through the mix of translucent and transparent glass panels, like Japanese lanterns illuminating the Sculpture Park.
Internally, the lenses create vaulted ceilings and cathedral-like spaces. Externally, they ascend out of the ground as sculptural interventions, playing with the landscape and engaging visitors both inside and out to partake in the architectural experience. In between these glass lenses, a layer of grass creates a green roof where visitors can admire sculptures or relax with a picnic. This integration of landscape and architecture creates a building that is neither above nor below ground, but both at the same time.
Near the south end of the Bloch Building, visitors can look out clear glass façades for punctuated views across the wooded campus. The Isamu Noguchi Sculpture Court will feature an elegant installation of the Museum's collection of large-scale masterworks by the sculptor, second only to the Noguchi Museum in Queens, New York. In the Noguchi Court, the separation between art inside the Bloch Building and art in the outdoor Sculpture Park is dissolved visually, emphasizing the relationship to nature that inspired Noguchi's work. One of his pieces, Fountain (1987), has been installed to straddle the clear glass exterior wall, emerging on either side to exist in both the gallery space and as part of the Sculpture Park collection.
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