KANSAS CITY, MO.- The remarkable new Bloch Building - the much-anticipated expansion of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art - open to the public on Saturday June 16, 2007. 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 Museum’s works of art, culled from its world-class collection of more than 34,500 works spanning antiquity to the present. 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 library.

“This moment will define the next era of achievement for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,” said Marc F. Wilson, Menefee D. and Mary Louise Blackwell Director/CEO of the Museum. “We look forward to engaging our visitors in these breathtaking new spaces, which are part of a much larger vision for the future of the Nelson-Atkins.”

The new Bloch Building is part of a bold strategic plan to greatly increase the Museum’s role in the community and the region. The vision includes expanded programming, an increase in studio classrooms and educational resources, and a strengthened endowment fund which will allow the Museum to remain free of admission for all visitors.

Bloch Building – Design Overview - The new Bloch Building, named in honor of Henry W. Bloch, Chairman of the Nelson-Atkins Board of Trustees, and his wife Marion, is the centerpiece of the campus transformation. The extension connects to the eastern end of the original 1933 building and runs 840 feet along the edge of the Museum’s Kansas City Sculpture Park. The scheme creates unique spaces for particular works of art, with a courtyard dedicated to the Museum’s significant holdings of Isamu Noguchi sculptures, and an entry plaza and reflecting pool designed by Holl to contain a piece by installation artist Walter De Maria.

At the northern-most end of the campus, the translucent upper section of the Bloch Building will house the new main lobby and public spaces for the Museum, such as the café, art library, and bookstore, as well as office and support spaces for the staff. Visitors to the Bloch may enter from the 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.

From the lobby of the new building, visitors will descend through five distinct levels of galleries that invite a lively interaction between art and architecture. Organized in sequence to support the progression of the collections, the galleries’ floors drop in harmony with the slope of the 22-acre main lawn as the double-glass walls of the lenses reach upwards. Internally, the lenses create vaulted ceilings and expansive 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, and in some cases on top of them, 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.

The Nelson-Atkins Building Renovation and Collections Reinstallation - Renovations to the 73-year-old Nelson-Atkins Building, designed and overseen by project architects Berkebile Nelson Immenschuh McDowell of Kansas City, are also a major component of the campus transformation. Those efforts include the renewal and repair of Kirkwood Hall and the 500-seat Atkins Auditorium; cleaning and conservation of the Nelson-Atkins’ stone façade; replication and refurbishment of Beaux-Arts detail work throughout the building; new elevators for transporting both visitors and art; and upgrades to the infrastructure and roofing.

Additional gallery space has allowed the Museum to intensively reexamine its artistic holdings. This process has led to a transformation in the presentation and interpretation of the entire Nelson-Atkins collection that is both physical and intellectual. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, the curators collaborated with the architecture team, the designers, and the education staff to encourage new thinking about how to best engage visitors in the art experience. They also examined the collections from unconventional standpoints to discover affinities between works of art. The reinstalled galleries reflect this open and thorough rethinking of the traditional chronological progression.

The Nelson-Atkins Building will house the Museum’s European, pre-1945 American, Asian, Southeast Asian, American Indian, and Ancient art collections. European and American decorative arts and works on paper will be fully integrated into the appropriate collections, offering a greater understanding of the culture and lifestyle of particular periods. The Bloch Building will present the African art, photography, and contemporary art collections. Special exhibitions galleries at the southern end of the new building, will nearly double the space available for traveling exhibitions and will allow for the presentation of experimental projects and changing art installations. The additional gallery space and flexibility available in the new design will give the collection room to breathe; allow pieces that have not been on view to be shared with the public; and give curators, designers, and education staff a chance to explore new ways of showcasing the collection.

The new Sculpture Hall, which opened in 2005, provides an important formal component of the unified design by connecting the two perpendicular buildings with a clear pathway that extends from the marble and stone entrance of Kirkwood Hall to the glass and steel lobby of the Bloch Building. This transition exemplifies the counterpoint between old and new that is a key aspect of the aesthetic balance of the redesigned campus. Originally the special exhibition space, the Hall also demonstrates the design teams’ creative reuse of space when re-imagining the Museum as a whole. By raising the ceiling and removing the plaster walls that had filled in marble arches at the gallery’s east end, the new layout changes the flow of the Museum. A new staircase leads visitors from the Sculpture Hall to the Atkins Stair Hall and acts as a dramatic bridge that accentuates the art above and the main lobby below. The staircase and landing have been refurbished with imported marble from Italy and are now lit by four new chandeliers. Based on an original fixture from 1933, these chandeliers were designed to reflect, and contribute to, the grandiose Beaux-Arts setting.

The Ford Learning Center opened in September 2005 and is now the Museum’s expanded home for its renowned education and outreach activities. Because the Center is located on the Museum’s ground floor and only steps away from the galleries, this model arts education program begins with first-hand looking, discussing, and experiencing the works of art in the Museum’s collection. The largest education initiative in the Museum’s history, the Ford Learning Center triples the space d