- Finalists’ concept designs go on display at the Nelson-Atkins and in online gallery
- Community and wider public invited to comment at the exhibition or directly via online form
- Exhibition showcases work by teams led by Kengo Kuma & Associates (Tokyo), Renzo Piano Building Workshop (Genoa), Selldorf Architects (New York), Studio Gang (Chicago), Weiss/Manfredi Architecture (New York), and WHY Architecture (Los Angeles)
Link to download images: tinyurl.com/5n6bsy8r
Kansas City, MO–The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art today revealed the six finalist teams’ concepts in the competition to transform the museum with a dynamic, open, and inviting design. The expansion project’s goal is to attract new audiences by creating vibrant spaces to host more art, and new immersive and interactive creative experiences for the community.
The concepts – devised by some of the most respected designers working in museum architecture today – are now available to view in an online gallery on the competition website at competitions.malcolmreading.com/nelson-atkins/gallery.
They can also be seen in a free exhibition at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Building Belonging: Designing the future of the Nelson-Atkins, that opens Mar 15 through June 1, 2025. The public is invited to comment at the exhibition or through the portal nelson-atkins.org/architectural-competition-comments.
For further details of opening hours and access, visit the event page.
The museum’s Architect Selection Committee (ASC) will meet in late Spring to interview the finalists and make a recommendation to the Board of Trustees. Following ratification and the winning team’s appointment, the chosen design will be refined in close partnership with the museum and its stakeholders, including local communities.
The museum’s Board of Trustees aims to broaden the conventions of the museum – which offers free general admission – so it continues evolving as a place where everyone feels they belong. The project will integrate the campus, the Donald J. Hall Sculpture Park, and the two existing buildings into a cohesive new experience.
The first stage of the competition, which launched in October 2024, attracted 182 teams from 30 countries on six continents.
The teams’ summaries of their concept designs can be found below in Notes to Editors.
“These six concept designs articulate six unique visions of a new and even more dynamic Nelson-Atkins.” said Evelyn Craft Belger, Chair of the museum’s Board of Trustees and the Architect Selection Committee. “This is a thrilling moment for the museum and our community when we start to visualize an identity that will carry us through the coming decades.
“We encourage our community to visit the exhibition and share your thoughts – which proposal best realizes your aspirations?”
“We asked for bold, inspiring moves that also respected the existing museum campus and I’m so happy to say we’ve received them in these initial designs,’ said Julián Zugazagoitia, Director & CEO of the Nelson-Atkins, “Each is a fascinating response to a complex project brief, together they bring myriad perspectives. The teams have shone their beams of thought on our big questions: how do we synthesize our existing icons with a new proposition? How do we modernize and embrace the future but keep the best of our history? And, most of all, how do we create a museum that is transparent for all and instills a sense of belonging and well-being?”
In conjunction with this exhibition is the release of Director’s Highlights: Celebrating 90 Years of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, which captures the richness and variety of the museum’s collection told through the eyes of the curators and Zugazagoitia himself. It includes about 200 works of art organized by the decade in which they entered the museum. Engaging stories, images, and colorful anecdotes accompany each work, along with historic photos and plans. The publication is available for purchase online and in the museum store.
Project Background
One of America’s finest art museums, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art cares for a superlative collection of more than 42,000 art objects. It is best known for its extensive Asian art, European and American paintings, photography, modern sculpture, and Native American, African, and Egyptian galleries. It is surrounded by a 22-acre sculpture park.
Offering free admission, the museum based in Kansas City, Missouri, is nationally and internationally acclaimed and serves a broad region within a 300-mile radius.
The museum is embarking on this new project in response to the increasing needs of its community, growing and increasingly diverse attendance, the desire to exhibit more art and collections, and aspirations to serve future generations in transformative ways.
The competition is for a new addition (or ensemble of additions) of approximately 61,000 square feet, along with a part-renovation of the original Nelson-Atkins building, as well as activation and amplification of the outdoor campus – all framed within a thoughtful, sustainability strategy.
Highlights of the new addition(s) may include a primary entrance and welcome foyer, a comprehensive photography center, new featured exhibition galleries, learning and engagement spaces for hands-on art activities, a black box-style theater for digital art and immersive programming, and a restaurant for indoor/outdoor dining and events.
The estimated construction budget (funded entirely by private donations) is one part of a larger, more comprehensive campaign starting in 2025. The campaign is expected to be the single biggest investment in the arts in Kansas City in recent years, contributing to the city’s future dynamism and vitality. The museum receives no public tax dollars for operations or capital projects.
The competition process is being led by an Architect Selection Committee chaired by Evelyn Craft Belger, also Chair of the museum’s Board of Trustees. A full list of selection committee members follows.
For further information and future updates, including the winner announcement, please visit competitions.malcolmreading.com/nelson-atkins.
Media inquiries:
Kathleen Leighton (CDT)
Manager, Media Relations and Production
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
816.751.1321
Competition inquiries:
James Matthews (UTC)
Senior Competition Manager
Malcolm Reading Consultants
+44 (0) 207 831 2998
james.matthews@malcolmreading.com
Images
Link to download images: tinyurl.com/5n6bsy8r
Notes to Editors
About the concept designs (as supplied by the teams)
- Kengo Kuma & Associates
The team is supported by GGN (Landscape Architecture), Endelman & Associates (Accessibility), Post Oak Preservation Solutions (Heritage), Art Processors (Exhibition and Experience design), and Buro Happold (Structural/MEP/Lighting Engineering).
Drawing from the Midwest’s prairies, riverbeds, and limestone bluffs, River / Stone weaves art, people, and landscape into a living cultural tapestry. Fluid pathways unite the 1933 Nelson-Atkins Building, the Bloch Building, and a new expansion grounded by local materials and human-scaled gestures. Porches, covered passages, and terraces dissolve the form, encouraging spontaneous encounters and linking the museum with surrounding neighborhoods.
Locally sourced stone, sustainable timber, and expansive glass echo the land’s quiet rhythm, fostering warmth and transparency. Underscoring Kansas City’s geological heritage and communal spirit, River / Stone broadens accessibility for families, first-time visitors, and longtime patrons alike.
Gently sloping routes and terraced landscapes reflect regional history, creating places for reflection, conversation, and cultural exchange. Through this harmonious approach, the new addition transforms the museum’s campus – building on its longstanding commitment to engagement, wonder, and inclusivity – where nature, architecture, and community flow seamlessly as a true “Museum for All.”
- Renzo Piano Building Workshop
The team is supported by West 8 (Landscape Architecture) and Arup (Sustainability, Structural/MEP/Lighting Engineering).
Our proposal for the expansion of the Nelson-Atkins Museum seeks to reconcile past and present, forging a museum for all. The original Beaux-Arts building, with its classical symmetry and civic grandeur, now stands in quiet dialogue with Steven Holl’s luminous addition to the east. Our design tries to restore equilibrium – balancing the old with the new – through a pair of precise interventions to the north and south. The sweeping, monumental stairs, long a symbol of art’s inaccessibility, are transformed. In their place, an open threshold welcomes visitors of every background, dissolving the notion of art as a privilege reserved for the few. A transparent pavilion – light-filled and porous – erodes the boundary between institution and community, allowing the museum to breathe with the life of the city. Here, architecture becomes an act of invitation, transforming the Nelson-Atkins into a truly civic and accessible space, placed gently within the life of the city.
- Selldorf Architects
Bringing Art to People
The original Nelson-Atkins building re-establishing itself as the central figure with a newly glazed Portico façade that signals activity and a new generosity of scale and spirit. Truly a Museum for All.
Our design seeks to strengthen the Nelson-Atkins Museum at all levels – to connect it more to its surroundings, to its landscape, to its history, to its visitors and wider public – bringing art to people.
We wish to create a world-class inviting arrival experience where everyone feels welcome, where barriers to entry are dissolved literally and figuratively.
Our new West Building is a partner to the Nelson-Atkins and Bloch Buildings, completing and complementing the ensemble with openness, transparency and flexibility. Comprised of a series of volumes, the new building confidently holds the western edge of the site with inviting hospitality and artmaking spaces. Framing and activating the redesigned North Court the new building will energize the entirety of the Nelson-Atkins campus.
- Studio Gang
The team is supported by SCAPE (Landscape Architecture), Atelier Ten (Sustainability), JSA/MIXdesign (Inclusive Design), Snyder Consultancy (Cultural Strategy), Heritage Consulting Group (Heritage), Burns & McDonnell (Civil Engineering), Lam Partners (Lighting), Altieri (MEP Engineering), and Thornton Tomasetti (Structural Engineering).
Studio Gang’s design extends the edges of the Nelson-Atkins building with vibrant thresholds that merge the museum with the Sculpture Park and invite visitors into closer relationship with art and each other. Uniting inside and outside, the new architecture embodies the creative energy of connecting across differences.
Wherever visitors arrive, they’re immediately greeted with lively activity, transparency, and amenities that encourage them to stay and discover more. Accessible, inviting entrances extend inside to become convenient internal connections.
At the south, the Art Bluff wing hosts the museum’s new exhibition, education, and social spaces. Its topographic design negotiates the site’s slope and bridges the different levels of the existing museum, helping people of all abilities easily get where they want to go. At the north, landscape enhancements and a café enliven the plaza, and the museum’s original entrance is reopened as a fully accessible front door.
- Weiss/Manfredi Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism
The team is supported by SCAPE (Landscape Architecture), Atelier Ten (Sustainability), WeShouldDoItAll (Exhibition and Experience Design), Taliaferro & Browne (Civil Engineering), Jaros, Baum & Bolles (MEP Engineering), and Severud Associates (Structural Engineering).
A Connected Tapestry
A nexus of culture and community, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is treasured for its innovative programs and internationally recognized collection. The crisp forms of the existing buildings offer an elegant counterpoint to the landscape, yet their opacity conceals the vibrancy of the museum and precludes an invitation to the broader community.
Our design’s organic geometries shape the new west addition, and, with the expanded South Terrace, recenters the Cultural Campus around the treasured Sculpture Park. The newly accessible north entry frames a natural ecological landscape, and the rooftop addition amplifies a central entry.
Strategic renovations and luminous additions reinvigorate the elegant but fortified museum to signal a new transparency, both literal and philosophical. New and existing galleries, expanded spaces for education, performance, events, and dining all overlook the reimagined Sculpture Park. Here, new reciprocities – between architecture and landscape, art and ecology, invite the community to engage and create a new tapestry for the arts.
- WHY Architecture
The team is supported by WILDING x WHY (Landscape Architecture), Atelier Ten (Sustainability), STRATA Architecture + Preservation (Heritage), Arup (MEP Engineering, Lighting), and TYLin Silman (Structural Engineering).
The Hug: A Museum That Embraces
Our expansion is more than an addition – it is an embrace. It wraps around three sides of the existing museum, creating new connections to the galleries, landscape, and city. This is not just about gaining space – it’s about unlocking the potential of what already exists, shaping a more welcoming, inclusive, and connected museum. A new entry pavilion ensures an intuitive, inclusive arrival while pathways link visitors to art, events, dining, and gardens. The new Sky Wing offers Kansas City’s most breathtaking cultural vantage point. The Photography Center, positioned at the intersection of The Nelson-Atkins building and Bloch addition, serves as a bridge between past and future, establishing photography as an anchor of the museum’s evolving curatorial vision. This museum can evolve, adapt, and grow with its audience. Every surface is a canvas, every space an opportunity, ensuring The Nelson-Atkins remains a place of discovery and wonder for generations.
About the Architect Selection Committee
The finalists’ proposals will be judged by the museum’s Architect Selection Committee:
- Evelyn Craft Belger, Board Chair and Chair of the Architect Selection Committee
- Rick Green, Trustee and Immediate Past Chair of the Board
- Valerie Chow MD, Trustee
- Paul DeBruce, Trustee
- Linda Woodsmall-DeBruce, Member of the Committee on Collections
- Bill Gautreaux, Trustee
- Don Hall, Jr., Trustee
- Shirley Bush Helzberg, Trustee Emerita
- Neil Karbank, Board Secretary
- Sandra Lawrence, Board Treasurer
- Greg Maday, Trustee
- Ramón Murguía, Former Trustee
- Mark O’Connell, Trustee
- Kent Sunderland, Trustee
- Julián Zugazagoitia, Director & CEO of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Malcolm Reading Consultants
Malcolm Reading Consultants (MRC) is a strategic consultancy that helps clients to imagine and define contemporary environments, both built and natural. MRC is the leading specialist in devising and managing design competitions internationally. We believe in the power of design to create new perceptions and act as an inspiration.
MRC has run over 200 design competitions in settings including Antarctica and Australia; London and Washington, D.C.; Oxford and Cambridge; and Houston and Riyadh, for extraordinary and emblematic projects representing over US$50 billion of construction value.