art education at the nelson-atkins art museum

Kansas City's Nelson-Atkins Art Museum

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, known for its neo-classical architecture and extensive collection of Asian art. The museum was built on the grounds of Oak Hall, the home of Kansas City Star publisher William Rockhill Nelson. When he died in 1915, his will provided that upon the deaths of his wife and daughter, the proceeds of his entire estate would go to purchasing artwork for public enjoyment. This bequest was augmented by additional funds from the estates of Nelson's daughter, son-in-law and attorney.

   In 1911, former schoolteacher Mary Atkins (widow of real estate speculator James Burris Atkins) bequeathed $300,000 to establish an art museum. Through the management of the estate, this amount grew to $700,000 by 1927. Original plans called for two art museums based on the separate bequests (with the Atkins Museum to be located in Penn Valley Park). However, trustees of the two estates decided to combine the two bequests along with smaller bequests from others to make a single major art institution.

   The building was designed by prominent Kansas City architects Wight and Wight, who also designed the approaches to the Liberty Memorial and the Kansas governor's mansion, Cedar Crest. Ground was broken in July 1930, and the museum opened December 11, 1933. The building's classical Beaux-Arts architecture style was modeled on the Cleveland Museum of Art Thomas Wight, the brother who did most of the design work for the building said:

"We are building the museum on classic principles because they have been proved by the centuries. A distinctly American principle appropriate for such a building may be developed, but, so far, everything of that kind is experimental. One doesn’t experiment with two-and-a-half million dollars^."

   When the original building opened its final cost was $2.75 million. The dimensions of the six-story structure were 390 feet (120 m) long by 175 feet (53 m) wide making it larger than the Cleveland Museum of Art.

   The museum, which was locally referred to as the Nelson Art Gallery or simply the Nelson Gallery, was actually two museums until 1983 when it was formally named the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Previously the east wing was called the Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, while the west wing and lobby was called the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art.

   On the exterior of the building Charles Keck created 23 limestone panels depicting the march of civilization from east to west including wagon trains heading west from Westport Landing. Grill work in the doors depict oak leaf motifs in memory of Oak Hall. A recreation of the Oak Hall library containing the original wood paneling, floors, rugs, furniture, pictures and books, is on an upper floor. The south facade of the museum is an iconic structure in Kansas City that looms over a series of terraces onto Brush Creek.

   About the same time as the construction of the museum, Howard Vanderslice donated 8 acres to the west of the museum, across Oak Street, for the Kansas City Art Institute, which moved from the Deardorf Building at 11th and Main streets in downtown Kansas City.

   As William Nelson, the major contributor, donated money rather than a personal art collection, the curators were able to assemble a collection from scratch. At the height of the Great Depression, the worldwide art market was flooded with pieces for sale, but there were very few buyers. As such, the museum's buyers found a vast market open to them. The acquisitions grew quickly and within a short time, the Nelson-Atkins had one of the largest art collections in the country.

   One-third of the building on the first and second floors of the west wing were left unfinished when the building opened to allow for future expansion. Part was completed in 1941 to house Chinese painting and the remainder of the building was completed after World War II.

   Annually, from 1954 through 2000, the Jewel Ball, Kansas City's debutante ball, took place every June in the main hall to benefit both the museum and the Kansas City Symphony. The ball was moved temporarily to accommodate the expansion project at the museum and returned in 2008.

   In 1993, the museum began to consider the first expansion plans since the completion of the unfinished areas in the 1940s. Plans called for a 55 percent increase in space and were finalized in 1999.

   Architect Steven Holl won an international competition in 1999 for the design of the addition. Holl's concept was to build five glass towers to the east of the original building which he calls lenses. The lenses they top a 165,000-square-foot underground building known as the Bloch Building. It is named for H&R Block co-founder Henry W. Bloch. The Bloch building houses the museum's contemporary, African, photography, and special exhibitions galleries as well a new cafe, the museum's reference library, and the Isamu Noguchi Sculpture Court (visit his museum). The addition cost approximately $95 million and opened June 9, 2007. It was part of $200 million in renovations to the museum that included the Ford Learning Center which is home to classes, workshops, and resources for students and educators and opened in fall of 2005.

      In the competition to design the addition, all the entrants except Holl proposed creating a modern addition on the north side of the museum which would have drastically altered or obscured the north facade which served as the main entrance to the museum. However Holl proposed placing the addition on the east side perpendicular to the main building. Holl's lenses now march down the east perimeter of the grounds.

   Admission to the Museum is free every day and visitors may use any of seven entrances to access building. The main visitor's desk is in the Bloch Building. On the north side of the museum, A reflecting pool now occupies part of the J.C. Nichols Plaza on the north facade and contains 34 occuli to provide natural light into the parking garage below. The casting of The Thinker which occupied this space prior to the renovations has been relocated south of the museum.

Modern new additions to the museum

    The collections consist of artworks from Africa, America, China, Europe, Japan, and South Asia. Art educators may sign up for the museum's free newsletter and visit the research library located at Ford Learning Center. Current exhibitions are posted online and articles exploring the collection in depth may be accessed through the Nelson-Atkins blog.

   The museum's grounds are home to the Kansas City Sculpture Park. The park consists of 22 acres designed by Dan Kiley and Jaquelin Robertson. Among the thirty sculptures on display in the park are important works created by the late Henry Spencer Moore.

    I will include lesson plans below that I have specifically written for those teachers who wish to utilize both the collections at the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum and the web database generated by the museum's staff.

• Henry Moore Lesson Plan and Power Point in progress
• Elie Nadelman Lesson Plan and Power Point in progress
• Asian Ink Wash Painting and Power Point in progress

links to historic homes and house museums

      Historic house museums in the United States differ a great deal one from another. Some are organized around the person who lived there or the social role the house had. Consequently, they may contain objects that belonged to the inhabitants. This approach is mostly concerned with "authenticity". Other historic house museums may be partially or completely reconstructed in order to tell the story of a particular area, kind of life or period in time. This approach is guided by the "narrative" of the people who lived there. In each kind visitors learn about what they are seeing.

      Important to all historic house museums, however, is that the structure once was intended, or at least used, as a place of human habitation, and that the contents of the structure, now a museum, were intended for such places. Thus, if historic structures, though once homes, do not principally contain objects originally intended for the home AND have them arranged in a home-like ambiance, but instead have such objects arranged like a more typical museum, or principally contain displays and objects not originally intended for a home, then they should not be called "historic house museums."

• Mount Vernon, is the former home of America's first president, George Washington.
• Colonial Williamsburg, an entire collection of buildings dating back to Colonial America.
• Native American Cliff Dwellings, are located in several State National Parks.
• The Pilgrim John Howland House is the one house located in Plymouth still where early American pilgrims actually lived.
• The John Alden House was inhabited by the youngest of the men who came to America on the Mayflower.
• Both the Custom House and the Derby House are located in Salem, the first town of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1626. These homes are preserved by the Maritime National Historic Sites Association.
• The Paul Revere House, at 19 North Square, is the oldest house in Boston and is the former home of Paul Revere.
• Not far from Revere's house is The Old State House Museum. It burned to the ground in 1747 but was rebuilt because of it's important historical significance. The Declaration of Independence, the repeal of the Stamp Act and the declaration of peace with England were all officially announced from this building's balcony.
• The Ironmaster's House built in approximately 1636, was restored by Wallace Nutting.
• Eleven house museums at Historic Deerfield.
• Visit homes of the 1800's at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Mass.
• In Amesbury, Mass. visit the homes of Mary Baker Eddy and John Greenleaf Whittier.
• There are several interesting homes along the Historic Seacoast of Massachusetts: The House at Yarmouth, built in 1721, The Squire Thomas Cooke House, built in 1765 in Martha's Vineyard, The Aptuxcet Trading Post, 1626, The Stoney Brook Mill at Brewster, Nantucket's Old Mill and The Jethro Coffin House, built in 1686.
• Fort Western in Augusta, Maine.

Homes In Missouri:

• The home and mill belonging to Waltus L. Watkins is very near to the town I grew up in. It has a marvelous man-made lake there and also a lovely bike path. The home and mill are in excellent condition. I grew up in the once small town of Liberty, MO. This little town had quite an unusual history. It would seem as though the townspeople could never make up their minds during the Civil War about who's side they were on. There are several historic homes there, in fact, that have old brick tunnels beneath them where slaves were hidden during the day and released at night. These tunnels have been filled in with clay and/or concrete because they became unstable over the passing of years. When I was young, I helped give guided tours through one of these beautiful old homes on Water Street during the holidays. Water Street is very near to the town square where Jesse James in broad daylight robbed the Clay County Bank. History enthusiasts can also tour the old James Family Farm in the nearby town of Kearney. Not far from the town square is William Jewell College. This college had a tumultuous past during both the Civil War and World War I and you can read about it here. Visitors should not pass up the chance to take two walking tours in Liberty. There is one of the college campus and another of the Lightburn Historic District. Included in that college tour, I'm assuming, is a quick look into the historic cemetery on Jewell campus.
• When I was a school girl, students often took day trips to Fort Osage, the very first outpost of the United States built following the Louisiana Purchase. It was built by William Clark to show the British and the Spanish that the U. S. could protect their territories. It also had a very active trading post.
• The very first permanent settlement in Missouri was at St. Genevieve, founded by the French in 1735. I love the historic charm of the architecture in this town.
• See the boyhood home of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) in Hannibal, MO.
• St. Louis, gateway to the West, has many historical homes people may tour year round. The oldest building in this city is the Manuel Lisa Warehouse. It was built by a Spanish fur trader in 1818. In the old Cathedral there are exhibits portraying the early history of St. Louis. Overlooking the river is the Old Courthouse. It was completed by 1864 and it was used by the county/city for 85 years. Dred Scott was tried there to defend his status as a free man. The Eugene Field House still stands on South Broadway and is open to the public. Robert Cambell, who made a fortune in trade, built an ornate Victorian mansion on the Southwest corner of Fifteenth and Locust Streets. Grant's Farm is home to the Hardscrabble House. It was built by Ulysses S. Grant during the early years of his marriage to Julia Dent before the Civil War.
• The Sappington House Museum was built by slave labor in 1808. It is located very near to the city of Kirkwood, Mo. Directly behind it is a charming library housing rare books and city history documents. There is also a tearoom at this complex where visitors can have brunch or desert.

Asian-American link resource for art education

Asian-American Collections from Museums:

• Angel Island: The Immigration Station Barracks Museum
• The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
• Honolulu Academy of Arts
• Chinese American Museum of Los Angeles
• The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens
• The Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco
• The Chinese Historical Society of America
• The Bishop Museum
• Chinese American Museum of Chicago
• Hakone Gardens
• Japanese American Cultural and Community Center
• Peabody Essex Museum
• Japanese American National Museum
• Museum of Chinese in the Americas
• Kam Wah Chung and Co. Museum
• Hawaii's Plantation Village
• Pacific Asia Museum
• National Museum of Asian Art
• Lyman Museum and Mission Home
• The Trammell and Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art
• The Wing Luke Asian Museum
• Korean American Museum

More Web Sites:

• Asian-Nation
• "Echoes of Freedom: South Asian Pioneers in California 1899-1965" 
• The Chinese Historical and Cultural Project
• The "Asian Pacific American Heritage Month"
• The Asian Society
• Enchanted Learning
• "The Chinese in California, 1850-1825" from American Memory 
• Japan Guide
• Camp Harmony Exhibit
• Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum
• Kaboose
• Lao Family Community of Minnesota
• "Virtual Japanese Culture," Kids Web Japan
• Timeline of Chinese Dynasties for Art Education

Articles Listed by The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco:

• The Gold Rush and Anti-Chinese Race Hatred – 1849
• Photograph: “Chinese Girl with Bound Feet”
• Chinese Miners in the Gold Fields – 1860
• Chinatown Gambling and Vice – 1871
• View Inside a Chinese Opium Den
• Anti-Chinese Sentiments in San Francisco – 1874
• Kearneyism in California, by Viscount James Bryce – 1877
• Kearneyism, The Chinese, and Labor Unrest – 1877
• “You Sabe Him? Kealney Must Go!” – 1877
• “The Sand Lot and Kearneyism,” by Jerome A. Hart – 1877
• Remarks by Denis Kearney on Kearneyism in California
• “The Kearney-Kalloch Epoch,” by Jerome A. Hart – 1879
• The New California Constitution – 1879
• “Chinatown Declared a Nuisance!” – 1880
• Scene in a Chinese Opium Palace – 1880
• Chan Pak Kwai – 1881
• “China’s Menace to the World,” By Thomas Magee – 1890
• Arrest in Chinatown – 1897
• Arnold Genthe Photograph of Chinatown – 1898
• Tour of Chinatown – 1900
• Chinese Telephone Company – 1901
• Why Chinatown has Remained Where it is – 1902
• Funeral of Tom Kim Yung – 1903
• Chinese Orphans Escape the Great Fire – 1906
• “Asiatic Coolie Invasion” – 1906
• Mayor Schmitz Bars Coolie Labor from Earthquake Reconstruction – 1906
• Treatment of Chinese Refugees Following the 1906 Earthquake
• Plans to Relocate Chinatown – 1906
• China’s Empress-Dowager Contributes to Chinese Relief – 1906
• National Guard Members Loot Chinatown – 1906
• Relief for the Chinese – 1906
• Smuggling of Chinese Slave Girls Thwarted – 1912
• In Chinatown (Chinese Women Vote) – 1912
• Chinatown Tong Wars of the 1920s
• Chinese Wedding Mid Scenes of Splendor - 1924
• Brief History of Chinatown, by Jesse B. Cook – 1931
• English-Language Newspaper for Chinatown – 1940
• Ronald Reagan at Charlie Low's Forbidden City – 1942
• Paper Sons – 1969
• “Celebrating Chinese New Year,” by Audrey Wong – 1995

art education at the saint louis art museum

Original photo by Matt Kitces

The Saint Louis Art Museum is one of the principal U.S. art museums, visited by up to a half million people every year. Admission is free through a subsidy from the cultural tax district for St. Louis City and County.

   Located in Forest Park in St. Louis Missouri, the museum's three-story building was constructed as the Palace of the Fine Arts for the 1904 World's Fair, also known as the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Architect Cass Gilbert was inspired by the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, Italy. The British architect Sir David Chipperfield was selected to design a major addition to the museum. It will add 224,000 square feet (20,800 m²), including above ground gallery space and underground parking. Construction began in 2009, with completion planned for 2012. Michel Desvigne has been selected as landscape architect.

   In addition to the featured exhibitions, the Museum offers rotating exhibitions and installations. These include the Currents series, which showcases contemporary artists, as well as regular exhibitions of textiles, new media art, and works on paper.

   The collection (virtual tour) of the Saint Louis Art Museum contains more than 30,000 art works from antiquity to the present. The collection is divided into eleven areas and the museum offers education materials for educators under the following categories: African * American * Ancient Egypt * Islamic * Asian * Contemporary * Decorative Arts and Design * Early European * Modern Europe * Oceanic * Pre-Columbian and American Indian * Sculpture * Prints, Drawings, and Photograph.

   The modern art collection includes works by the European masters Matisse, Gauguin, Monet, Picasso, and Van Gogh. The particularly good collection of 20th-century German paintings includes the world's largest Max Beckmann collection. The museum has Chuck Close's Keith (1970).

    The collections of Oceanic and Pre-Columbian works, as well as handwoven Turkish rugs, are among the finest in the world. The museum holds the Egyptian mummy Amen-Nestawy-Nakht, and two mummies on loan from Washington University. Its collection of American artists includes the largest U.S.-museum collection of paintings by George Caleb Bingham.

   Teacher may access press releases, RSS Feeds, article listings, a calendar of events, frequently asked questions, a library for research, free newsletters and exhibition catalogues online.

   Below are lesson plans that I have specifically written for those teachers who wish to utilize both the collections at the St. Louis Art Museum and the web database generated by the museum's staff.

1. Portrait of A Survivor - is a lesson plan integrating both art history, the visual arts, and literacy. 
2. Tialoc Mask - is a lesson combining paper mache and mosaic methods. This one is still "under construction" I'll include the teacher's sample and photos soon
3. Drawing from Greek and Roman Pottery - is a lesson that focuses the student's attention on the elaborate design details used by ancient Greek potters.
4. The Egyptian Scribe and His Equipment - This art lesson includes a literacy activity describing the life style and routine of an Egyptian scribe along with an art activity. 
5. Egyptian Jewelry Design - includes instructions for making a press mold. I will include photos of this method at a later date.
6. Ancient Effigy Pot - made with an old paper mache method.

a productive visit to the art museum

 

      A Museum docent is a title used in the United States for educators trained to further the public's understanding of the cultural and historical collections of the institution, including local and national museums, zoos, historical landmarks, and parks. In many cases, docents, in addition to their prescribed function as guides, also conduct research utilizing the institution's facilities. They are normally volunteers.

      Prospective docents generally undergo an intensive training process, at the expense of the educational institution, which teaches them good communicative and interpretive skills, as well as introduces them to the institution's collection and its historical significance. They are also provided with reading lists to add to the basic information provided during training, and must then "shadow" experienced docents as they give their tours before ultimately conducting a tour on their own. 
      Museum docents are not, however, trained art historians and should not be considered as such. What visitors should consider is that the docent is better equipped to draw students into discussion and guide them through the collection. But, a docent is not always well read or has not always studied with the intensity of a professional scholar. Docents also have their own opinions and sometimes are too prejudicial about the artworks they discuss. Be selective about who conducts tours for your classroom. Sometimes it is best to ask for transcripts of tours prior to your students participating in them. Teachers should tour a collection if possible, prior to their students' visit to the museum. I've listed below some important points to consider before taking your students on a museum field trip.

1. Make sure the information being shared is age appropriate.
2. Make sure the topic covered shares some relevant connection with the materials you will cover during class.
3. Know when enough is enough! Some students are too young to stand and listen to a docent for long periods of time. Make sure the tour is not too long!
4. Know where the toilets and water fountains are located. Take breaks often for young students.
5. Have plenty of parent helpers to accompany students on your field trip.
6. Give students partners or have some kind of a system planned out in order to keep track of who is where at all times.
7. Make sure students are not hungry before your guided tour.
8. Give a simple lesson plan about museums or art galleries a day or two prior to visiting the institution so that students will behave better and also know what they are looking at.
9. Discuss and role play in advance the appropriate behavior you expect every student to demonstrate during their visit.
10. Reassure students, parents, and helpers that a museum visit involves "the study" of multiple cultures and prepare them properly for this experience in advance. To study something or someone does not mean that you necessarily expect others to participate in activity that they are uncomfortable with. In order to study culture properly, students are made aware of the whats, whens, hows and wheres of people that may be different from themselves. However, this does not mean that they are expected to mirror and accept the values and practices of those cultures in order to make excellent grades. A professional art educator can help students make personal connections with artworks and artists without compromising the students' freedom to choose what they wish to believe. They can also teach art history and assess whether or not a student knows the facts without requiring those same students to be indoctrinated in beliefs that they do not agree with.

the conservation of artworks

      During week five of my Art at The Museum course, our class toured the conservation facilities of the St. Louis Art Museum. We listened to an expert in this field, Laura Gorman, discuss her methods and philosophy in artifact restoration. According to Gorman, museums decide to restore objects so that visitors may develop a superior visual comprehension of how artworks and objects looked and functioned when these were first made. 

      Ms. Gorman does not permanently alter the objects; every bit of paint and filler can be removed easily if curators should prefer to do so. Her work is really quite delicate and extraordinary. She matches colors perfectly. The students could not seriously discern between her work and the original fragments of the restored pottery she was working with. The restored object she had just completed, an incense burner, was a part of the Meso-American collection on display at the museum right now. 
      The museum also has lesson plan packets for sale. One of these is about museum conservation and restoration. I have not been able to locate it in their online shop. Teachers probably need to call instead to special order these materials from the museum. (314-721-0072)

      The video above is of a similar facility located in DC.. Including a unit lesson plan in your art classroom about museum conservation prior to a field trip to an art museum is a great idea. Curriculum such as this would help students to appreciate the collections they will view and develop a greater understanding of why collections are preserved and displayed in the first place. 

• Conservation and Scientific Research at the Walters Art Museum 
• Conservation at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Conservation happens at J. Paul Getty Museum
• Protecting and Preserving the MoMA Collection

interactive art museums & internet art websites for art educators

 

      Last semester, I participated in a course offered to pre-service teachers at the St. Louis Art Museum. This class met early in the morning, one day a week, and lasted for four hours. I loved taking course work at this location. Museums offer so many different resources for art teachers. I've listed below some of my favorite interactive art museums on the web.

• Bridges to Art is at the Worcester Museum of Art, Massachusetts
• ArtZeum by Telfair Museums
• Utah Museum of Fine Arts , Virtual Exhibitions
• Free Podcasts About Great Art at Sheldon
• The Corning Museum of Glass 
• Wacky Kids by the education department at the Denver Art Museum
• Resources for Students from The Getty
• Heard Museum Past Exhibition
• ArtBabble presents Tag Tours from the Indianapolis Museum of Art
• NGA kids by the National Gallery
• Destination Modern Art by MoMA.org
• SAM sites for teachers by the Seattle Art Museum
• Philadelphia Museum of Art 
• The National Museum of The American Indian
• What Is Printmaking?  from Saint Louis Art Museum