Arts & Entertainment

Build It, Already

Kemper East’s installation eases the pain of art-world construction.

By Theresa Bembnister 

I know that it's all for the greater good, but whose genius idea was it to schedule major construction at the Nelson and the Kemper at the same time?

The entire interior southeast wall of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art is covered with a temporary wall of whitewashed plywood and plastic sheets, blocking off the Sally Kemper Wood and Barbara Uhlmann galleries. Another 1,157 square feet of prime gallery space is off limits to the Kansas City viewing public because of construction at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. It's annoying, but by now we should be used to the maze of temporary walls that visitors must navigate in order to see what little of the Nelson's permanent collection is on display.

Fortunately, construction at the contemporary museum will be quick and painless. (Unlike at the Nelson, where work won't be finished until 2007.) In eight short weeks, the two small galleries and the museum shop will have been enlarged by approximately 1,400 square feet. That space once housed the coat room (which nobody used) and the administrative offices, which have been moved across the street.

Before it was renovated, the 1906 building now known as Kemper East was best-known as the home of the Weltmer family. Weirdly, it still retains some of its residential comforts -- a full working kitchen remains, as well as a bathroom with a shower on the third floor; the first floor contains a nonlending library decorated with gigantic couches in which people can curl up and read.

The museum commissioned Kansas City artist Anne Lindberg to design a site-specific piece for its main staircase. Lindberg's Flock consists of thin, wiry filaments ending in slightly thicker cylinders that extend out from the wall. The cattail-like protrusions sway gracefully in the breeze from a nearby air-conditioning vent. Additional pieces from the permanent collection are displayed in galleries as well as in nooks and crannies throughout the building.

"Creating a work for a stairway is a challenge, but I felt that the flexibility of these tiny elements would allow the work to almost follow you up the stairs and create a sense of place," Lindberg says. "So in this case, the passage from the first to second floors is animated and heightened. The Kemper East building itself is stunning, full of history, and I wanted to make a work that would integrate with the architecture and not be static."

For that, I guess we can tolerate a few construction delays.