Pieces Of The Past

As our director likes to say, coming to an art museum is like getting into a time machine," says Kathleen Leighton. "You can go anyplace in history."

At the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, that includes Egypt when pyramids rose and pharaohs ruled, Italy when Caravaggio was the most famous painter in Rome, Europe when knights rode into battle on armored horseback and the Americas when buffalo roamed the plains, hunted by Indians on painted ponies.

While students on spring break might not be captivated by Caravaggio, the exhibit of "a knight in shining armor," circa 1565, is among favorite attractions for younger visitors, says Leighton, as are a marble lion from Greece, circa 325 B.C.E., grasshopper cages, "something ancient Chinese children played with," and miniatures from ancient Chinese tombs -- tiny houses with tiny furnishings, all intended for the afterlife.

That variety of some 33,500 objects is why the Nelson-Atkins Museum, which opened in 1933, is described as an "encyclopedic" collection. It was born from the desire of two Kansas City residents -- William Rockhill Nelson, founder of The Kansas City Star, and Mary McAfee Atkins, a Kentucky schoolteacher who was widowed young and left with money she invested in art -- to create something grander than the cow town on the banks of the Missouri River.

"The precedent of reaching out to the community was set on Dec. 11, 1933, when the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts was unveiled to a staggering crowd -- nearly 8,000 people crossed over the museum threshold that cold winter day -- and in one week's passing 32,000 visitors had entered the building," says a history of the museum. "Perhaps never before had Kansas Citians had so much to marvel at under one roof, and it seems they understood from that first encounter that this art museum was theirs, envisioned and realized as a grand gathering place for people and art."

The best part of being an encyclopedic museum is that there's something for everybody, Leighton adds.

Mom might love the European pottery and porcelain, English silver, French furniture and European and American period rooms from the middle of the century.

Dad might enjoy the photography collection, which dates back to 1839 and includes works by Mathew Brady and Alfred Stieglitz.

And for the kids, there's a 14th century cloister, Andy Warhol's 20th century paintings and a sculpture park where Leighton says the next big thing is rising from the ground.

Created by acclaimed artist Robert Morris, a Kansas City native, the triangular-shaped, glass-walled labyrinth won't open until May, but Leighton says visitors have enjoyed seeing it blossom among the early-spring budding of the trees.

And everybody loves the museum's infamous Shuttlecocks, created in 1994 by Claes Oldenburg and Coojse van Bruggen. But visitors are warned not to climb on them.

"You might hear a voice saying, 'Please stay off the sculpture,'" she says with a chuckle. "There are microphones set in certain places around the sculpture park -- and kids love it when that happens!"