Blog @ the Nelson-Atkins

In honor of Halloween, I asked our tours department to provide a list of "scary" art in the Museum's collection. If you think you're brave enough, come to the Museum and see these spooky works of art tonight.

1. Atlantean Figure of a Winged Demon (above)

2. The Emperor Hadrian

3. The Temptation of Saint Anthony

4. Woman IV

5. Saint George and the Dragon

Fall is my favorite season in the Kansas City Sculpture Park.

Of course spring is also lovely and oh, early summer is quite nice too. In fact, winter is beautiful when there is a fresh blanket of snow under a bright blue sky and yellow sun. Ok, I guess there is never a bad time to visit the Sculpture Park (or the Nelson-Atkins for that matter).

But for today, at this very moment, fall is my favorite. Especially with vistas like this. Come enjoy the scenery!

The LEONARDO online library system partnership is 14 years old today, October 27, 2008! Named "Leonardo" after Leonardo da Vinci in recognition of his renown in both the arts and the sciences, the Ameritech Horizon system was officially inaugurated on October 27, 1994.

This important partnership between the Spencer Art Reference Library (SARL) at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art with the Linda Hall Library of Science has resulted successfully in an online library system linking the holdings of two research libraries in Kansas City.

The partnership continues thanks to the special endowment fund established by both institutions. The online system has evolved during the 14 years through company changes, system upgrades, bibliographic network changes, and the hard work and dedication of the library staffs from both institutions, and at the Nelson-Atkins, with additional support from the IT department.

At SARL, LEONARDO provides for the public 24/7 access to bibliographic information about the 152,000 volumes in 10 languages: books holdings; journal volumes/ issues holdings; CJK character displays; auction catalog searching protocols; emailing lists; online reserve reading lists; and for staff in the building, self-checkout to offices.

Behind the public LEONARDO system, the library has a framework for acquisitions of monographs and serial publications, including payment history, and for item cataloging/metadata for each item according to national standards through the link to the international bibliographic network, OCLC (prior RLIN).

What’s next at SARL? The LEONARDO/OCLC systems will have soon a bibliographic description for the 96 unique document collections in the Museum Archives, one of the Library’s contributions to the 75th Anniversary Year of the Museum. These descriptions or collection-level records are constructed according to national standards. This opportunity opens up the Archives to discovery on the web via LEONARDO, OCLC, and Google. Researchers will still need to contact the Archivist and visit the Archives to consult the documents.

Happy Anniversary LEONARDO!

Today, I was lucky enough to get a tour of the new American galleries with curators Margi Conrads and Catherine Futter.

A total of 8 galleries will display paintings, furniture, sculpture, works on paper and decorative objects from Colonial times to World War II. The collection will be arranged both chronologically as well as geographically.

Six key dates will provide visitors with context and connections to what was happening in both American life/history and in American art at that time. My favorite guiding principle was explained by Margi when she noted that certain paintings or artists needed to be next to each other because you must "obey the paintings."

The new galleries are gorgeous, even without the art. My pictures certainly don't do it justice so make sure you plan a vist next year. The new installation is scheduled to open in April 2009.

The featured exhibition Art in the Age of Steam: Europe, America and the Railway: 1830-1960 is so large that it takes up all the Museum's exhibition space. It is filled with more than 100 paintings, photographs, prints and drawings by artists including Claude Monet, Rene Magritte, Alfred Bierstadt and Thomas Hart Benton.

Among all the amazing works of art, there are lots of little stories. For instance, some paintings were used to romanticize and advertise train travel while others make a comment on the disruptive nature of trains. Some paintings convey personal traumas of the artists while others show the artists' passion for capturing light, air and color.

One of my favorite stories is about a painting called The Great Marquess by Terence Cuneo. It is from 1967 and therfore represents the "1960s" in the exhibition title. The painting is very nostalgic portraying an old retired locomotive that has been restored to its original glory by a train society in Britain.

I guess that is a more common practice in Britain because the curator commented that the painting isn't really considered that great. It is the sense of nostalgia and the amount of care and time that people put into restoring these trains that made it a perfect fit for the exhibition. He had thought about trying to find one of these paintings and was quite happy to receive a phone call from a friend who told him that his "mum" had one of these paintings in her house and she would be happy to lend it.

Not that the painting isn't worthy of being in the exhibition or nice to see. In fact, if you look closely enough, you may find a small mouse that the artist hid somewhere in it. He was known to do that in his paintings as a sort of trademark. Whenever I see a tour of school children around this painting, they are all eagerly searching for the mouse.

The concept of Resting Places Living Things: Designs by Michael Cross may seem a bit foreign for an art museum. Basically, the exhibition is about furniture but I think the real subject is about approach.

In several interviews I've heard Michael explain his approach to objects is very childlike. As a designer, his objects are meant to be functional. But as an artist, there is no reason they can't be fun.

I took my 8-year-old daughter to see the gallery today and she loved it! She ran up and down the hills, she sat at the table, and she was very interested in the piece called Flood which consists of wires and light bulbs in glass jars filled with water (by the way, there is no danger of electrocution). Her favorite piece was the shelves which look like tree branches attached to the wall. They come in very handy if you need a spot for your stuffed alligator.

The exhibition opens tomorrow but you may get a sneak peek tonight if you attend Michael's lecture at 7 p.m.

British designer Michael Cross is still in the building installing his American debut Resting Places Living Things: Designs by Michael Cross.

The floor is finally finished and it sounds like it was quite a feat to get the wood to curve and bend exactly the way he wanted it but that is part of the experimental nature of Michael's work.

Today he is installing Flood which requires unraveling a bunch of colorful wires so that they can be "re-raveled" into the glass containers. The containers will be placed on a table and all the wires will be connected underneath the floor. On the other end, the wires are connected to light bulbs. The catch is when the glass jars are filled with water. One of the preparators told me he had no idea how it worked without electrocuting everyone. I'll have to look into that.

You can find out more about how Michael works at his lecture Resting, Living, Making, Being: Michael Cross and Contemporary Design at 7 p.m., Friday, Oct. 17.

If you've been to the Nelson-Atkins to see the exhibition Art in the Age of Steam: Europe, America and the Railway, 1830-1960, you may have noticed an area by the exit where you can submit comments and thoughts. This is typical of most exhibitions at many museums. It usually consists of a book on a podium.

For Art in the Age of Steam, we chose a different route (pun intended). Comment cards are available that direct visitors to discuss the following topics:

1. Share a memorable journey from your past (it doesn't have to be by train).
2. What does the future hold for transporation and what forms of transportation might be the subject of an exhibition 100 years from now?

We have added an online area for people to submit their comments on this blog. In addition to the two topics, we would like to know if you visited the exhibition and what you thought of it.

Thanks for sharing!

Tomorrow is opening day for our newest photography exhibition, Restoration: Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison. I had a chance to tour the exhibition this morning with curator Jane Aspinwall. As usual, I learned something I hadn't known and I'm here to share it with you.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison are local artists who have made good. Robert is a graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute and Shana has local ties as well. The couple have officially been collaborating since 2000, and they currently have an exhibition at the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York.

I have to admit from what I had seen previously, I considered their work to be a bit dreary. I'm happy to say I have changed my tune. Their work is very much about hope for the future and the good inside everyone of us.

Restoration contains 15 photographs from the ParkeHarrison's recent series ranging in date from 1998 to the present. The artists use found and handmade objects to create elaborate images that draw you into their ongoing tale of "the Everyman." This character is the sole inhabitant of a damaged world who works tirelessly to restore the soil, clean up debris and even reteach the birds to fly.

In some images, we see Everyman with enormous tools including a hammer, wrench and rake. He is seen trying to accomplish mammoth tasks such as cleaning up a huge mountain of debris or build a wooden bridge across an open body of water. The scales of the tools indicate the enormity of his task.

In other images, Everyman uses technology to help reinvigorate the earth. One image called Night Garden shows him planting flowers in a field. Planted alongside each flower are decorative lights (the kind you would find on a string of Christmas lights). With the mess of wires strewn among the flowers, the question seems to be in using technology, is Everyman doing more harm than help?

There is a logical sequence as Everyman continues to work day in and day out to accomplish his overwhelming task in ways that are more than inefficient. Eventually, he becomes worn down to the point where he is sitting in a drab room that looks like a prison cell (Mourning Cloak, above). He sits with his back to the viewer without a shirt. He is hunched over looking at his hands. His pasty white skin is almost glowing from the one source of light in the room - a small sliver of window at the top of the ceiling.

The turning point is that his head, back and arms are covered with vibrant butterflies. As curator Jane explained, this is an image where the tables have turned on the Everyman. Instead of him trying to rejuvenate the earth, nature is trying to reinvigorate him.

The ParkeHarrisons will visit the Museum on Nov. 22 for a discussion of their work.

Installation of Resting Places Living Things: Designs by Michael Cross has been going on for more than a week now. I stopped in today to check the progress and found the floor still under heavy construction. It is fairly easy to see what the finished product will look like but it seemed that there were some issues as to how to get there. Click here to read about Michael and his current project at the Nelson-Atkins.

For those of you on Facebook, you can check out a short (and not so high quality) video of this afternoon's progress and a few more installation shots on the event page for the Artists' Talk happening Oct. 17. You may reserve your tickets to hear Michael talk about his new installation and get a sneak peek on the Museum's calendar.

I love it when I can find an extra reason to go into the galleries. Today's reason is a painting called Muscial Angel by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones. This striking painting will be on view in Gallery P32 for the next few months while van Gogh's Olive Orchard is on loan to another institution.

Burne-Jones was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite movement which was a group of English painters who sought to return to a kind of art that had existed before the Renaissance master, Raphael. This new group created works of intense color, rich detail and spiritual intensity.

If you read the label, you will find that Musical Angel was painted in the late 19th century as a study for a stained glass window for Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford. The entire window depicts the patron saint of music, Saint Cecilia, flanked by musical angels. This angel is holding a violin in one hand and the palm of martyrdom in the other.

The painting is strkinigly beautiful at first but after a bit, I began to notice how awkward it made me feel. The angel stands in a lyrical position with the head bent and the body curved slightly to the right. The robe is a rich blue with dramatic drapery falling into pleasant patterns. While there is a sense of grace, there is also a feeling of discomfort. This is not a joyful angel. The face is sharply turned to the side showing only a profile and no emotion. Even the position of the feet is jarring with one pointing directly forward and the other pointing directly to the right. The wings are also positioned awkwardly with one flat against the angel's back and the other sticking out at a very odd angel.

My biggest question is what is this painting doing in the Post-Impressionist gallery. At first it felt completely out of place but once I looked at it closely (and chatted with one of our curators of European painting) I began to make the connections.

The description explains that Burne-Jones was a prominent figure in the English Arts and Crafts movement. This painting is an example of flattening form into two-dimensional pattern which anticipated art noveau approaches to design. It hangs next to Faaturuma (Melancholic) by Gauguin. It turns out that Gauguin was heavily influenced by the work of Burne-Jones.

You can definitely see that in the use of flat, matte colors of intense hues in both works. Where Burne-Jones uses blue and red, Gauguin's use of bright pink is a bit shocking at first. For Gauguin, it is a matter of intensity to the point of saturation. However, the similarities are obvious. The woman's awkward body position as she slumps in the rocking chair is akin to the angel's jarring stance.

Another detail that seems incongruent at first is the draping of the cloth. Burne-Jones uses flowing drapes, folds and puckers on the angel's robe to create patterns and designs. The woman's gown in the Gauguin is flat on her body. He uses shadows to indicate her shape but it is certainly not a graceful shape. She is a lump of pink cloth with hands, feet and a head. Burne-Jones may have been a bit more subtle, but both artists have created intense figures that cause a powerful reaction (at least in me).

Musical Angel will only be on view through December 14.