Blog @ the Nelson-Atkins

Today, The Kansas City Star featured an article on 20th-century Hollywood film star Hedy Lamarr. It seems Lamarr is the Star of the Month on Turner Classics Movie channel.

This image of Lamarr by Clarence Bull is featured in the exhibition In the Public Eye: Photography and Fame.

Lamarr had quite an interesting life. After escaping from Germany in the 1930s, she struggled to be taken seriously and spent most of her career being mismanaged by movie studios and directors. One tidbit I never knew was that she was responsible for publicizing the technology that is used in cell phones.

You can see her films on Thursday nights on TCM in the month of April. Be sure to come see her glorious image and others through June 15.

The Museum's hard-working prep team is installing the paintings and sculptures for Sparks! The William T. Kemper Collecting Initiative which will open May 3. The exhibition will feature the 36 (and counting) pieces of art that have been acquired since 1999 when the William T. Kemper Foundation pledged $1 million a year for 10 years for the purchase of contemporary art.

Robert Storr, Dean of the Yale School of Art and former Senior Curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art has been the Museum's advisor in the project since 2003. He joined the prep team this week to work on installing the exhibition.

Everything looks fresh and new and much larger when it is not hanging up on the wall. The Kerry James Marshall is in a perfect spot. The light from the windows above makes the glitter sparkle and glisten. And there is ample room for people to stand back and take in the whole painting.

I'm glad to see that one of my favorites is back! Six Secret Places by Anish Kapoor is waiting to be installed in a new spot.

Monday will be a big day. They will install El Anastui's Dusasa I in a very special location. The piece is made of recycled liquor bottle wrappers that have been flattened and hand stitched together. It measures 24 x 30 feet and may be installed on the floor or hanging on the wall. The curators will make the final decisions on how it will be displayed. I will definitely be there to give you a sneak peek.

I had the chance to watch the preparators put together one of my favorite paintings from our contemporary collection today. Art Part by Elizabeth Murray consists of 22 separate canvases that form the image of a hand holding a paint brush (ok, I might have thought it was a rocket the first time I saw the painting, that is why I mention it).

The process was pretty cool. They begin with a life-size image of the painting as it was previously installed. They pin a template over the mock up and mark the places where they will hang the brackets. Then they begin to install the canvases one by one making sure they all fit together.

Take a look:

Tomorrow, I'll show you a little bit of the installation of a gorgeous new piece by El Anastui.

As promised, I have installation images for the Museum's new acquisition Dusasa I by El Anastui which will be featured in the exhibition Sparks! The William T. Kemper Collecting Initiative opening on Saturday. The work is simply stunning. Measuring more than 24 x 30 feet, it completely overtook the space where it was being installed.

The installation took more than a day to complete. In fact, I think the curators are still determining its final incarnation. The piece is able to hang on the wall or lay flat. As with the previous piece, Hovor, which we had on view as part of the Tapping Currents exhibition, the curators have chosen to install Dusasa I on the wall. However, it doesn't lay flat. Parts of it are scrunched up to allow it to billow in some parts and create a sculptural quality in other areas.

The work is created of recycled aluminum liquor bottle tops that have been flattened and stitched together. At first, they seem to be organized completely at random. But once you see the piece in its entirety, it is amazing to see how the shapes and colors create beautiful patterns.

I know that baseball season has been in swing for about a month now but at the Museum, we are getting ready for summer exhibition season. Tomorrow is opening day for our two featured exhibitions for late spring/early summer this year: Sparks! The William T. Kemper Collecting Initiative and Print Lovers at 30: Celebrating Three Decades of Giving.

We had a preview of both exhibitions yesterday. It was my first chance to see Print Lovers at 30 and I am eager to spend more time there. Hugh Merrill, printmaker and professor at the Kansas City Art Institute, is the guest curator. He gave an excellent overview of the different aspects of the exhibit and paid tribute to George McKenna, who was the Museum's curator of the print collection for almost 40 years until he passed away in 2007.

Next, we were treated to a tour of Sparks! led by Robert Storr who is the Dean of the Art School at Yale Univeristy and a former curator for the Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition is comprised of 36 works of art that have been acquired over the past 9 years through a generous contribution from the William T. Kemper Foundation.

Even though I am familiar with a good portion of the works, it was wonderful to get a new perspective as Storr explained the reasons behind what works of art were chosen. For instance, Marcel Duchamp's Box in a Valise and Man Ray's Object Indestructable are seminal pieces that help form a solid foundation for the contemporary collection. He also mentioned that during the collecting process, many artists were chosen because they have been overlooked and perhaps underappreciated. There are also several local artists including Stanley Whitney who help connect the Nelson-Atkins to our community.

My favorite parts of the tour were when Storr spoke about the artists themselves. He referred several times to the "elders of the tribe" including Louise Bourgeois and Dorothea Tanning, both of whom are in their nineties and still producing art. He also explained the connections between some of the artists and how they influenced each other either through personal or professional relationships.

I'm ready for the season to start. Play ball!

A new exhibition opens in the contemporary project space tomorrow. It features Siah Armajani, an Iranian-born artist whose uses simple sculptural forms to convey complex ideas.

The space will hold 12 works including a sketch of the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge in Minneapolis, a pedestrian bridge that spans 16 lanes of traffic to link the Walker Art Museum and the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Bridges are Armajani’s most enduring subject.

Other works in the exhibition, including Table by Window, come from Armajani's Dictionary of Building project in which he defined the primary units of buildings (doors, windows, stairs and closets) and their functions.

The exhibition is free.

Yesterday, I had a chance to visit one of the Museum's new exhibitions, Sparks! The William T. Kemper Collecting Initiative. On my way to the galleries, I picked up and audio guided tour.

I only got through the first part of the exhibition but I really enjoyed the audio tour entries about Marcel Duchamp's Box in a Valise and Man Ray's Object Indestructable.

Both works of art are related to the Dada movement which was an informal movement began in Switzerland during World War I. The movement included artists, poets, musicians and others who were disillusioned with the atrocities of war and the inhumanity of mankind's acts against one another. Many of Dada's followers believed that the world had lost all its reason which they reflected in their art including poems made of nonesensical words and music that had no harmony.

Box in a Valise is simply ingenuis. Duchamp worked for five years on the material for what he called his "portable museum." It combines 68 photographs, miniature replicas and color reproductions of his life's work. It contains versions of Nude Descending a Staircase and his masterpiece, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass). My favorite part is the "readymades" which includes a tiny urinal like the one he purchased from a plumbing store and presented as a work of art called Fountain and signed it "R. Mutt."

I was not as familiar with the piece by Man Ray. Object Indestructable is a common ordinary metronome with the photograph of an eye attached to the pendulum. The pendulum doesn't move but if you look from side to side, the eye winks open and closed. I enjoyed listening to the "tick, tick, tick" on the aduio guide as the narrator described how the work challenges traditional expectations about time and art.

I was interested to learn that the first version of this work was made in 1923 and called Object to Be Destroyed. That one actually was destroyed in 1957. The Museum's is the last version and was made in 1975. As far as I know, we have no plans to destroy it.

If you pick up the latest copy of Vanity Fair magazine, you will see a dazzling spread by the Gap advertising their artist edition t-shirts. The Gap is a sponsor of the 2008 Whitney Biennial and they have teamed up with previous Biennial artists to created a limited edition collection. The artists include many who have ties to the Nelson-Atkins.

On the back cover of the magazine is Chuck Close wearing a t-shirt with an image of his print of Philip Glass. Phil is featured in the Museum's current exhibition Print Lovers at 30: Celebrating Three Decades of Giving.

Inside the front cover is Kiki Smith whose work Constellation was installed in the Museum's contemporary project space last year and who is currently featured in the exhibition Sparks! The William T. Kemper Collecting Initiative.

Finally, there is a montage of artists that includes Kerry James Marshall whose work Memento #5 is included in the Sparks! exhibition as well. Marshall will visit the Nelson-Atkins on May 29 for a free lecture. I hope I have my t-shirt by then!

This past Saturday, photographer Bill Snead visited the Museum for a free lecture. Bill's photo of the Beatles is featured in the exhibition In the Public Eye: Photography and Fame. Bill spoke about his 50-plus-year career and told some wonderful stories. One constant theme was about how he felt that luck had so much to do with his career as a photographer.

The first image he showed was of the great actor Alec Guiness (he will always be Obi Wan Kenobi to me but I hear he had a very distinguished career outside the Star Wars trilogy). Bill was working for the Washington Post and happened to be the one who answered the phone when "Katharine" called down. That would be Katharine Graham, the Post's publisher during the 1960s and 70s.

Another great story was that as a young photographer in D.C., Snead was roommates with another newspaper photographer. One night, Bill came home to find a party in full swing. Among the guests was Ansel Adams. Bill asked him if he could get him anything to drink. Adams told him he wanted vodka with a splash of water. Bill provided the vodka and asked him if he would like to dance. When Ansel asked him why, Bill told him he had met many people who had told him about meeting Adams but none of them could say they had ever danced with the famous photographer. Adams agreed and the two danced. As Bill told the story, he added that no on there had the sense to take a photo.

After the lecture, Snead was gracious enough to sign copies of his book Bill Snead Photographs The First 50 Years.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Siah Armajani’s artwork at first. His work is featured in Dialogue with Democracy currently being exhibited in the Bloch Building project space. Although very interesting, I was not sure I was getting it. I was mostly thinking, “That green wood stain is really cool; I wonder if I could find that at a hardware store…” But then, I began to read, contemplate and understand the artworks.

The first piece that made me really begin to understand a bit of Armajani’s ideology is Chair for Sacco and Vanzetti Reading Room. The work is neat by itself, but there is a picture on the wall of the chair in the reading room actually being used – that’s when it clicked. I think it’s really interesting when artists want their art to be utilitarian and of the everyday. Armajani seems to make art at a level that all people can understand – because they can use it, touch it and interact with it.

I was also intrigued by the simplicity of the forms he uses. The wall text says his aesthetic is that of a “one-room school house and the small-town church.” And those curators sure know what they are talking about, because that is exactly what it looks like. His work is truly American, and he strives to bring about social interaction in his work.

Elements #16 is comprised of a recurring aspect of his work, the bridge. Not only has he actually created city bridges, but he encourages the viewer to really think about what the term “bridge” means. He uses functional items such as a bridge and a table for people to begin thinking about his art in terms of meeting places and human interactions in the everyday.

If you’re ever in doubt of a certain artist or wonder if you don’t quite understand the meaning of the work, make sure you read. Those scrupulously designed texts on the wall and labels really do serve their purpose. I ended up leaving the exhibit thinking about art in a new way.

P.S. If you are an admirer of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, you definitely need to check Dialogue with Democracy out.

As a way to get to know each other, the Museum's monthly all-staff meeting features a brief conversation with one employee. Everyone is asked the same seven questions. My favorite question is "If you could hang one work of art from the Museum's collection in your living room, which would it be and why?" Of course, it is assumed that there would be no consequences to removing the said work of art from the gallery and walking out the door with it.

Until recently, I would have answered with one of my top faves, such as the Chinese Guanyin or perhaps Monet's Water Lilies (not that it would fit in my living room, mind you). However, since the exhibition Print Lovers at 30 opened earlier this month, I have to add Art, by Robert Cottingham to that list.

I remember my first reaction when I saw it was, "wow! that would look great in my living room!" I love the vibrant colors and crisp, clarity of the image. I also love the context of the image. The letters that form the word "art" appear on a neon marquee. Cottingham has cropped the image so the word almost fills the entire frame. As someone who works in an art museum, I think it would be great to have this lovely picture hanging above my mantel to remind me every day of the beauty of art.

With all the talk of cutting vacations this summer, I was happy to find a new focus exhibition from our prints collection that features a variety of locations to transport you at absolutely no cost.

Landscapes: Real and Imagined includes classical ancient ruins, mysterious Egyptian remains and idyllic European pastorals.

There were several that I really enjoyed. An engraving by Samuel Palmer called The Lonely Tower looks like something out of an illustrated book from the turn of the century. In fact, it was inspired by a poem by John Milton called Il Penserosa. I was mesmerized by the depiction of the sky. The engraved lines create a sense of vivid movement in an otherwise calm depiction of the countryside. The twinkling stars and crescent moon behind layers of misty clouds give the picture a mysterious quality.

I also loved Johan Barthold Jongkind's Windmill Near Rotterdam (above). Having lived in Germany as a child, it reminded me of trips my family took to Holland. Jongkind lived in Paris during the 1860s and became very influential to the Impressionists. Jongkind was concerned with capturing rapidly changing light and atmospheric effects. The loose, free brushstrokes and simple outlines of boats and people clearly indicate an early Impressionist style. He was a mentor to Claude Monet, who actually called Jongkind his "true master."

One more that intrigued me was by Andre Lhote and is simply called Landscape. The label told me that it depicts a minimalist style of "delicate and poetic cubism." What I liked best about it is that it reminded me of a style used in Japanese scrolls. The perspective appears as if you are floating above looking down through the clouds into this village.

There were several others that were just amazing in this intimate exhibition in Gallery P27. Since admision is free to the Museum every day, you owe it to yourself to come take a quick mental get away.

The Bloch Building is the only place in Kansas City where you will find The Beatles, Charlie Chaplin and Ernest Hemingway all hanging out in the same room. Well, portraits of them that is. In the Public Eye: Photography and Fame invites you to gaze at these and other well-known faces as envisioned by the likes of Irving Penn and Annie Leibovitz – both of whom have shot extensively for some of my favorite magazines, like Vogue and The New Yorker. But the exhibit closes June 15, so you will have to hurry.

The walls enclosing In the Public Eye comprise a veritable landscape of celebrities, authors, musicians, politicians and the list goes on. The two things each of these portraits have in common is, one, the subjects are famous and, two, the photographers are famous as well. And if you can recognize every portrait and photographer in the exhibit, you will be better off than I was. After a recent visit, I had to berate myself a bit for not knowing a few of the names noted on the white information cards, like early 20th century starlet Evelyn Nesbit (below) and famous portraitist Yousuf Karsh (note to self: Read more!!).

On one wall you will find a familiar aesthetic representation: A single shot displayed in a pattern of four that can only be Andy Warhol. An aged but still beautiful Lana Turner was his subject and Warhol meticulously sewed the four black and white photographs together with thread. Next door is a portrait of author William S. Burroughs as shot by Richard Avedon. In a very effective use of the rule of thirds, Avedon placed Burroughs to the extreme left of the photograph against a stark white background. I liked this photograph of Burroughs a lot for its simplicity and because his well-worn face (Burroughs is an older man in this photograph) draws you in. Burroughs' expression is almost as blank as the background and you wonder what he’s thinking about.

Another wall gives you a stunning portrait of Ernest Hemingway (top), circa 1957, shot by Yousuf Karsh. In this picture Hemingway definitely looks the way he feels (perhaps a bit sad and run down?) but he also exudes a remarkable larger-than-life persona, helped along by the fact that the portrait is the largest frame on the wall. Further down the wall are a couple of shots done by Irving Penn of Spencer Tracy and Duke Ellington, both shot in a bare corner of Penn's studio. Ellington's tall frame looks too big for the space, but the expression on his face says that his good nature makes him game for anything. Penn has always been excellent at bringing out his subjects' personalities through the use of simple framing techniques and that amazing photographer's "eye" of his.

Throughout the exhibit you will find Hedy Lamarr, Greta Garbo, and even Richard Nixon. Posed images are mixed with photojournalistic entries, one of the most memorable of these being a portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr (above). Photojournalist James Karales deviated from the more well-known repertoire of King images by giving us a charming view of the activist at home with his young daughter. King did a lot of great things for the Civil Rights movement in his public life, but it is this view of him in his private one that is the most powerful portrait of King I've seen yet.

Last night, I attended a free lecture by artist Kerry James Marshall (featured in the current Sparks! exhibition). He was amazing. He spoke at length about his career but also about what it takes (in his opinion) to be a succesful artist. He talked a lot about why he creates the works he does. Surprisingly, it has little to do with a need for "self expression" or having a a sudden inspiration.

Marshall grew up in the 1960s in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. He remembered knowing at a very young age that he wanted to "make pictures." His first trip to a museum came in elementary school when his class visited the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Marshall noticed right away that there was a lack of black figures in the art works as well as an absence of black artists in the collection. He made it his goal to rectify that situation. One way of doing that is to create very large canvases that contain prominent images of black people. Small works, he said, can be easily missed. Some of his canvases are 10 feet by 10 1/2 feet or larger.

In talking about the progression of his art work, Marshall mentioned the various series and groups of objects that he has created. I was interested to hear him talk about his Memento series, of which the Museum owns Memento #5 (above). The series deals with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and the importance of the time in American history. Memento #5 is the final painting in the series. Marshall said he wanted a way to close the group so he painted the angel closing the silver curtain to give closure to himself as an artist but also to put closure on that time period. He also mentioned that the setting in the painting is his mother's living room. In fact, the settings in all five of the paintings are houses of relatives or close family friends. The reason for this is that they were all adults during the 1960s and would have experienced that time in a "real way." What was happening literally determined where they would be able to live, what kind of jobs were available to them and what they could aspire to achieve in the future.

It amazed me to hear him talk about this painting that I have seen so many times. I have read the label next to it in the gallery and I've heard docents and curators speak about it on many occassions. Now that I know the personal story behind it, I don't think I'll ever look at it (or perhaps any other work of art) the same way again.

The Museum recently announced an exhibition by British designer and artist Michael Cross to open in October. This will be Cross's first American exhibition and I have to say I'm quite intrigued. According to the press release, "visitors...will enter a space unlike any other in the Museum."

Specifically, the space in question is the contemporary Project Space in the Bloch Building. So far, it has contained three exhibitions of works by contemporary artists: Kiki Smith's Constellation; Tapping Currents: Contemporary African Art and the Diaspora; and currently, Siah Armajani: Dialogue with Democracy.

The new exhibition, Resting Places, Living Things: Designs by Michael Cross, will be the first time the Project Space will be used to exhibit contemporary decorative arts.

Trained as a product designer, all of Cross’ experimental designs can be industrially manufactured and then used in everyday situations. He uses the gallery as a design laboratory, an environment where experimental forms of objects can be nurtured into life and then studied for characteristics that can be transplanted into the wider world.

According to Mr. Cross, the exhibition can be summed up under one meta-message: "Everything can be seen differently - imagine, dream, play." I'm looking forward to it.

Pieces of art like those found in the Musuem's collection of Wedgwood have not, in the past, been my cup of tea (pun intended). My range of artistic interest is usually relegated to those pieces you will find at your typical modern art museum – you know, screen prints by Andy Warhol; paint-splattered canvases by Jackson Pollock. Thankfully, the handmade ceramic tea sets and dishes are there to show me how limited that range is.

The Wedgwood collection is part of the Museums collection of Decorative Arts. Each piece of Wedgwood is extraordinary in its detail. Many new additions have recently been added to Gallery P12 in conjunction with this week’s Wedgwood International Seminar being held here in Kansas City. Observe a charming tea set (see example above). The cups, teapot and saucers are all saturated with the colors pink and a smattering of orange. Placed around the tea set are several other matching pieces one might use at an afternoon tea party, like a tureen and a potpourri jar. All the pieces are shell-like. Some are actually in the shape of a shell and all of them are glazed to a brilliant shine as if the ocean itself had weathered away the dull outer parts and left a few shiny pieces in the shape of a tea set sitting amiably on the beach. While looking at this collection, a thought came into my head that has never entered it before: Wouldn’t it be fun to have a tea party?

Another of my favorites was a Pair of Plaques. The plaques are made of plaster with glaze and their shine factor could rival the tea set’s. They have a three-dimensional quality to them with raised patterns of grapes that look good enough to eat and a lemon and lime that look good enough to use as a garnish on an evening cocktail. Yes, I have been converted into someone who adores pottery and hand-crafted tea sets as works of art. Undeniably, these pieces are lovely to look at and any artwork that makes me think of food and cocktails is the artwork for me.

As part of the Museum's featured exhibition Sparks! The William T. Kemper Collecting Initiative, Kerry James Marshall’s Memento #5 pays homage to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. In the 9x13’ larger-than-life piece, a glittery curtain draws close above the words “What a Time, What a Time.” However, the spirit of the era is far from dead. It finds form and breath in contemporary freedom struggles throughout the world and in works by artists like Marshall. During his free lecture at the Museum—to which I had the pleasure of attending—Marshall described his visionary process as one born of synthesized components used to create something new. “I’m working towards something,” he said.

As perceptible as his paintings, there is little mystery as to the inspiration for Marshall’s subject matter. Born in 1950’s Birmingham, Alabama, the artist’s family moved to the vicinity of the Black Panther Party headquarters in South Central, Los Angeles and to the Watts neighborhood in 1963—two years prior to the infamous rebellion. In Watts 1963, Marshall depicts a seemingly romantic scene in the Nickerson Gardens public housing project. Three children stand, kneel and lay among their own irrational shadows—each making acute, intense eye contact with the viewer. Upon closer inspection, the viewer notices that one child is clutching his stomach. In the sunny, blue-skied field, under the banner “Here We Rest,” the children are anything but carefree.

Author Martin Glaberman wrote of the 1965 rebellion, “The events showed the instant mobilisation of a working-class community in a serious struggle against reactionary police, against the business community and against the war in Vietnam, a community acting in unison with the discipline of long association with common problems.”

Suddenly, the unsettling tone makes sense.

This and other works were personally illuminated by the artist to whom the audience responded with an overflow of questions. On challenging stereotypical black depictions within statistically racially disparate art institutions and “making it” as an African American artist, Marshall explained, “You can leave it to chance and hope you are one of the select few or you can think strategically. I think the stakes are too high.” The crowd echoed with their own inspired testimony and bursting applause. After the lecture, some listeners “rushed the stage” with t-shirts and other items to be signed. I even had the chance to speak with the artist one-on-one.

Since that evening, I have revisited Memento #5. I remember Marshall’s closing statement. “Is that it?” he asked, smiling. “I don’t think so.”

I look forward to the artist's future syntheses.

One of the inscriptions on the cornice of the Nelson-Atkins Building is "It is by the real that we exist, it is by the ideal that we live." Another one that I like is "The soul has greater need of the ideal than of the real." They were both said or written by Victor Hugo.

I think it is very fitting that within that same building, there is an exhibition of works on paper that encompasses both of those philosphies. Reality and Fantasy: Land, Town and Sea contains 24 landscapes that run the gamut from bucolic scenes of peasants and country life to a series on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

It struck me as I was viewing the works that the ones I thought were true life locations, often were not and ones that seemed made up, were actually real. For example, one called Alpine Landscape by Pieter Brueghel the Elder is most likely imaginary. In the scene, a small mountain side village is perched next to altitude-sickness inducing cliffs. There are people walking, riding horses and working in the fields. It looked pretty realistic to me. The label informed me that even though the artist had actually crossed the Alps, this scene was probably fictional.

Another example was the series I mentioned earlier of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World that includes the Colosseum at Rome, the Pyramids of Egypt and the Lighthouse at Alexandria. These sites did exist, however, by the time the artists were creating the prints in the 15th and 16th centuries, the real locations were long gone. In fact, the artists may have never even visited the remains of the seven wonders as evident by the engraving of the Pyramids in Egypt. These pyramids are none that I have ever found in the many books or on the multitude of Discovery Channel shows I have seen over the years on the great pyramids.

Another of the seven wonders that was obviously made up is the Walls of Babylon by Philip Gall. It was nicely crafted, however, it looked as though Gall had incorporated every convention he could think of to convey the antiquity of the scene. There was a man on a horse shooting a lion with a bow and arrow; statues of naked women at the every entrance; as well as soldiers, arches and palatial buildings at every turn. I guess that's why Babylon was so wonderful.

Many of the works have titles that suggest a certain genericness in location. There is Wooded Landscape with Figures, Riverbank and Landscape with Castle. I found that even those these scenes were obviously not real locations, the details and ordinariness of the people and buildings made these works more real to me. Go figure.

I am officially in love with Bart Michiels’ Verdun 1916, Le Mort Homme. It makes me want to jump inside and experience for a day (or two or three or 10) the vivid green grass and fog-soaked sky that are the photograph’s only subjects. The saturation of color in the lower half of the piece and the complete lack of it in the upper thrills my minimalist-starved soul and if ever there was a piece of art that I would marry, this one would be it.

Okay I hyperbolize (a bit), but suffice it to say that Human Nature: Recent European Landscape Photography is a very fine exhibit indeed. Curators at The Nelson-Atkins have brought together an enticing feast of landscape photography by artists like Michiels, Marc Räder and Massimo Vitali. But the subjects are not just of scenery alone. Several of these large-scale pieces are of populated landscapes, and visitors to the exhibit will be hard-pressed not to wish they were sunning themselves on the beach or trekking through a snow-covered mountain along with the people in the photographs. How could they not when gazing at such beautifully represented pieces of the world?

Take Vitali’s Viareggio Tuffo, for example. Sunbathers on a sandy beach is a sight many of us have seen and or experienced before (though perhaps not on a gorgeous Italian sandy beach populated with gorgeous Italians). But there is a dreamyness to this landscape that is absolute perfection. The cloudless sky complements the 50s Technicolor look of bathing suits and umbrellas and bronzed skin crowding the beach underneath. From afar the photo looks digitally-enhanced, but up close it seems just possible that Northern Italians are lucky enough to experience days that look exactly like this one. Oh, to be them!