page_title: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
section_title: Bloch Building Addition
hierarchical_section_title: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art / History / Bloch Building Addition
caption_attribution_description: English: Panorama of front facades, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, USA.
context_page_description: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, known for its encyclopedic collection of art from nearly every continent and culture, and especially for its extensive collection of Asian art.
  In 2007, Time magazine ranked the museum's new Bloch Building number one on its list of "The 10 Best Architectural Marvels" which considered candidates from around the globe.
  On September 1, 2010, Julián Zugazagoitia became the museum's fifth Director.
  The museum is open six days a week: Saturday through Monday, 10 am to 5 pm; Wednesday, 10 am to 5 pm; Thursday and Friday, 10 am to 9 pm. It is closed on Tuesday.
  Admission is free.
context_section_description: 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, conceived and realized with Design Partner Chris McVoy, was to build five glass pavilions to the east of the original building which they call lenses. The lenses top a 165,000-square-foot (15,300 m²) 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 Spencer Art Reference Library, and the Isamu Noguchi Sculpture Court. 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. It 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. Instead Holl and McVoy proposed placing the addition on the east side perpendicular to the main building. Their aim was to engage the museum's iconic sculpture garden to fuse the experience of art, architecture and landscape. Their lenses now cascade down the east perimeter of the grounds.
  During construction, Holl's plan met with considerable controversy. It was described as “grotesque, a metal box.” However, reviews of the new structure once completed have generally been raves:
  New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff gives this description:
  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 result is a building that doesn't challenge the past so much as suggest an alternate world view 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 ... 
  
  It's an approach that should be studied by anyone who sets out to design a museum from this point forward.
  The museum has gone against traditional conservatorial thinking in allowing natural light from the lenses to illuminate its art work. Most of the exhibits in the addition are below ground with the 27 to 34-foot (10 m) glass pavilions above them. Officials say that advances in glass technology have allowed them to block most of the harmful ultraviolet rays that could damage the exhibited works.
  The custom glass planks were manufactured by Glasfabrik Lamberts and imported by Bendheim Wall Systems.
  Admission to the museum is free every day and visitors may use any of seven entrances to access the 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 oculi 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 to south of the museum.
  In 2013, the combination of Steven Holl Architects and BNIM was selected to build a $100 million addition to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts that will be modeled somewhat on the Bloch Addition.
caption: North façade of the original building (1930-33), with the Bloch Building (1999-2007), left.
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