Nelson Atkins Museum of Art.

ARTS & DESIGN Architecture Review, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

A Translucent and Radiant Partner With the Past By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF Published: June 6, 2007/font>

Roland Halbe/Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Steven Holl's addition, left, to this institution in Kansas City, Mo., is a crystalline counterpart to its Beaux-Arts predecessor.

KANSAS CITY, Mo., May 31 — Working on theoretical proposals and the occasional house commission, Steven Holl emerged as a rare, original talent in the 1980s. The strength of his vision was rooted in a desire to reconnect architecture to the physical world — the shifting nature of light, the reflective surfaces of water, the texture of materials — and an atavistic love of craft. He went on to design plenty of good buildings, like Simmons Hall, with its porous steel-grid facade, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the angular forms of the art school at the University of Iowa. But missing was the kind of project that cements an architect's place in the pantheon: a building in which his special gifts, the full support of a client and the qualities of a site magically fuse into a near-perfect work.

Roland Halbe/Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art The exterior of the new Bloch Building Lobby Lens at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo. The New York architect Steven Holl designed the Bloch addition and renovated the museum for $200 million. The museum will open on June 9, 2007.

The waiting is over. Mr. Holl's breathtaking addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, opening here on June 9, is his most mature work to date, a perfect synthesis of ideas that he has been refining for more than a decade. By subtly interweaving his building with the museum's historic fabric and the surrounding landscape, he has produced a work of haunting power. For the art world, the addition, known as the Bloch Building, should reaffirm that art and architecture can happily coexist. The rest of us can draw comfort from the fact that public works of our own day and age can equal or surpass the grand achievements of past generations. The imposing south facade of the old Nelson-Atkins Museum is a testament to the scale of America's civic ambitions in the 1930s, when the effects of the City Beautiful movement could still be felt. Overlooking a series of terraces that step down to meet a gently sloping lawn, its colonnade of Ionic columns suggests a great temple to art, distant and unapproachable.

Roland Halbe/Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art The interior of the new Bloch Building Lobby Lens.

The result is a building that doesn't challenge the past so much as suggest an alternate worldview that is in constant shift. Seen from the north plaza, the addition's main entrance gently defers to the old building, the crystalline form suggesting a ghostlike echo of the austere stone facade. From there, the eye is drawn to the distinct yet interconnected translucent blocks, which are partly buried in the landscape. Mr. Holl refers to the blocks as "lenses" that draw light into the galleries. To understand their beauty, you must experience them over the course of a day, or preferably through the shifting seasons. When I first saw them from the park at dusk, they radiated light, and in their own way seemed as imposing as the limestone facade of the old 1930s building. The next morning, the glass forms had picked up the moodiness of the passing clouds. Depending on the angle from which they were viewed, their surfaces shimmered or turned a cool blue, so that they seemed to fade into the sky. But as beautiful as the lenses are, there is more at work here than visual games. The lenses are only the most visible part of a rambling underground world that is enveloped by the park. The south park actually rises up over the roof of the galleries, helping to frame a series of small sculpture courts between the glass boxes. People can stroll freely onto the rooftop courtyards, wander back down into the galleries, or navigate a staircase between the old and new buildings to the upper plaza.

Roland Halbe/Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art The exterior of the Bloch Building at night.By subtly interweaving his building with the museum's historic fabric and the surrounding landscape, Mr. Holl has produced a work of haunting power.

This freedom of movement adds to the sense of discovery, and it is reinforced by the museum's policy of free admission, uncommon among the nation's ever hungrier art institutions. This allowed Mr. Holl to create various entrance points into the building. The relaxed ease of entering fosters a sense that the museum and the artworks inside it belong to everyone, not to a privileged set of connoisseurs. (New York museums, take note.) The flow of bodies moving through the rooms is balanced with moments of stillness. The main lobby, for example, a long, narrow, three-story atrium crisscrossed by ramps that lead down into the galleries, prompts visitors to reflect on their choices. As you descend, you can follow a slow-paced sequence through the galleries or proceed down a long, shifting ramp with carefully framed views of the park and the old museum building. You can bypass some galleries and re-enter the sequence at any time without sacrificing a sense of clarity. Mr. Holl compares the experience to reading a 17th-century Chinese scroll painting, a narrative that requires a constant shift in your perspective as the drawing unfolds. The subtle shifts in the relationship to the ground outside instill a sense of weightlessness, so that you are constantly reorienting yourself within the landscape. But by creating alternate routes and slowing the pace through the galleries, Mr. Holl also prepares visitors for the encounter with art. Because you do not feel as if you are being herded through the galleries by an invisible hand, you tend to take your time in turning from one work to another. (The museum's holdings range from Chinese paintings, sculpture and ceramics to the Hallmark Photographic Collection.)

Roland Halbe/Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Contemporary works by Richard Estes, Donald Judd and Alex Katz in Gallery L3 in the Bloch addition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum.

As you near the end of the sequence of galleries, you can turn and gaze back up through a window at the facade of the old building across the park, which has never looked more gorgeous. It's a generous gesture to the past, one that ingeniously punctuates the space. But none of this would really matter, in the end, if it weren't for the quality of the light. This has long been a contentious issue in museum design. Despite recent advances in glass technology that block most of the harmful ultraviolet rays, most conservators remain leery about the damage that light can inflict on artworks. One result, more often than not, is a cautious evenness in exposure that can grow monotonous.

Roland Halbe/Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art The southernmost lenses of the Bloch Building illuminated at night

Mr. Holl solves this problem by varying the height of his galleries from 27 to 34 feet. This allows for architectural spaces enlivened by shifting natural light. Big, curved panels inside the lenses funnel a mix of northern and southern sunlight down into the galleries, so that you are aware of the passing of a cloud or a bit of thunder. A few carefully placed spotlights meanwhile focus attention on the paintings. Mr. Holl has often talked about the desire to imbue his buildings with poetry. Here he has done something more: He has created a building that sensitizes visitors to the world all around them. It's an approach that should be studied by anyone who sets out to design a museum from this point forward. Multimedia Slide Show Views of the Museum

Copyright by the New York Times 2007