Steven Holl and the New Nelson-Atkins

Illustration of the Nelson-Atkins Museum with Steven Holl's addition — Courtesy Kansas City Area Development Council

A quick link to my piece in the new issue of Time about the fascinating Steven Holl addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. And a link here to a Time.com slide show with many more pictures.

The Nelson-Atkins at night, as seen from the roadway on its eastern side

To appreciate what Holl has done there, it's useful to think about the cultural center that Norman Foster completed in 1993 for the French city of Nimes. It stands directly across from the Maison Carree, one of the most famous of Roman temples. (For one thing, it was the model for much of Thomas Jefferson's thinking about architecture.) Confronting one of the icons of Western architecture, Foster was on his best behavior, and produced a very elegant, classically Modernist steel and glass gridwork that addresses the stone of the old building in more open terms and extends its classical proportions without replicating them.

Cultural Center; Nimes/Norman Foster -- In foreground: Maison Carree

In Kansas City, Holl was faced with a similar task. The very neo-classical Nelson-Atkins Museum, which opened in 1933, is in some ways an architectural descendant of the Maison Carree. And like Foster, Holl produced a building that resonates with the classical lines of its neighbor, but without direct quotation. Plainly, Holl felt freer than Foster to take his addition down some irregular paths. (The Nelson-Atkins is a nice building, but it's not one of the touchstones of the Western tradition, so Holl didn't have to tiptoe around it.) All things considered, it's quite an achievement.