Summer Happenings At Two Area Museums

looking for something cool to do on a hot summer day to day on keep your prisons will look at what's going on et tu area museums the watkins community museum of history in downtown lawrence and the nelson atkins museum of art in kansas city missouri i'm kay macintyre we'll visit with mark wilson the director of the nelson atkins where it's been one year since the opening of the new block building but first where the watkins community museum of history in downtown lawrence the site of a very special exhibit on tour from the smithsonian institution in washington dc new harmonies an exhibit that looks at american roots music the many influences of folk music from immigrants on the music of today we'll visit with mike walton the interim director of the watkins museum howling christie exhibit court nader an archivist and kbr is owned by the williams' bob welcome to the program ok thanks for asking him afterwards you look around we have a lot of neat stuff here at the

information this new harmonies exhibit is the celebration of american roots music so let's start with a basic definition what exactly do we mean by rich music well under the definition is is is somewhat obvious it's where does the music because our music now come from and that what's interesting and from what i've seen this exhibit so far as we begin to walk through it is that our much as americans prove all american culture it's very much the blend of many cultures coming together in a particular pretty much all of american pop music in any form you could think of a country a pop rock and roll hip hop although scientists are descended from music's which involve a cultural centers of two different cultures one are immigrants from the british isles the scotch irish experience on in the appalachians and the second is a culture of african slaves are also immigrants although against their will to america and the blending of those cultures are really are the roots of american music and i think for him looking at the kinds

of things in this exhibit pretty good handle on those different streams coming together in one day and that is what is distinctively american about music and many people think the but the most are the best representation of american culture is music because it's within music that i think you had the greatest synthesis early on i mean art traditions of literature visual art those things didn't really have the same kind of bland as musicians usually working class people getting together maybe in the eighteen forties and you might have a slave or an ex slave or a frigate are playing a banjo and you might have some one of scotch irish descent plain old jed and the two that figuring out how can we sit down and play music together and that's pretty much the same story all the way through american pop music you just mentioned the music of immigrants from the british isles and in fact our very first stop on this exhibit features music from the british isles there's been quite a struggle love work of the culture

of the scotch irish and appalachian in fact jim webb a senator from virginia has talked about that quite a bit of what that culture abroad and one thing that brought with traditional music from the british isles bolder terms of dance music and we think of things like jigs and reels the starch in the irish and especially in america the scotch irish originally scottish with ireland after northern ireland's migrated to america and seventeen hundreds and early eighties hundreds and they brought not only that instrumental dance tradition but they brought the traditional ballads all some of which are actually evil and others of which originated scotland and ireland and that was a musical called for that state pretty isolated in america it well into the nineteen hundreds all but even so it had corporate banks and one thing i noticed this first panel has a mandolin player a mob boss or player a fiddle player which is all it put out your banjo and one of the key things that happen appalachian musical culture was your

corporation the banjo which was a descendent of instruments from africa with gourds are instruments and from africa which developed and what was very recognizable as a band mr moore modern banjo by the making hundreds and i was a key element of the culture in fact in the brilliant book called out of the summit for the movie but in the brilliant book called now by charles frazier you have the banjo and the fiddle as dickie musical influence played the route that book which was proud of appalachian culture so i think this is a great panel but i'm a bit surprised the banjo doesn't figure prominently right in the us to be fair week do you find a banjo right around the corner and it makes the link between that appalachian music and another branch of roots music that was about this panel what will grass and the monroe the father of bluegrass is is right here plays madeline and awesome is

musical descendants lester flatt and scruggs reporter bill monroe's not his first band at his first pro bluegrass band in fact the whole term bluegrass constable munroe because he called his band bill monroe and the bluegrass boyce building from kentucky and they're not in any musical turned bluegrass and even building call a bluegrass originally but the banter whiskey and many people think of bill monroe was the father of bluegrass well earl scruggs made in the godfather of bluegrass because he took the old banjo style pork all have a rhythm and style and he started playing with three fingers on the banjo and really incorporated a highly virtuosity jazz approach to playing banjo all much more aggressive pushing the rhythm and that became the salmon with by bluegrass and within the bluegrass world are still big argument can it possibly be bluegrass if it doesn't have a banjo and emily bluegrass people say it not blue grass about a banjo i'm not quite that limited in my approach to what it is but

certainly they're recognizable sound of bluegrass is to a great extent depend on the banjo so having the banjo here effectively literal records and publish them around here somewhere a lot of the book really the first bluegrass elkies in the fifties or savory probably right on the cover featuring the five string banjo because that was so grab people but there's other things here that are really cool because you got western swing over here and western swing band singing cowboys there was just an especially you took country music and he put together with big band chance than they have bob wills and the texas playboy's lined up and that's something the one role certainly drew part in what he was to witnesses is pretty good although that the main picture in the bluegrass is kind of interesting it has no roosevelt in virginia nineteen thirty three which is at least a decade before what anybody would say bluegrass was so let's just kind of what they did was thought as a cool picture with a first lady

also what have a musical picture but it does point out the curators will be calling soon to say let's do you think this exhibit is all about panels and descriptions of roots music for us to assert that new harmonies features a lot of music interim director mike we'll have interactive locations lot of stage and we can hear it in their different samples of the different styles on some instruments that show when people talk about films about musical turkeys we put this together it's amazing really do everything is in the right place it looks pretty it was also clear that his of the posters have a locker which is one of the most important difference in american cultural history because god of us senate and i feel so clear channel and radio

station in those of us is also i had requested to clear channel am one were young and doesn't really exist anymore and they were allowed to broadcast over a high wattage and they would be hurt over much of the country so really most of the eastern part of the country from the rocky mountains to the east coast could hear the us senate night debbie assembled a whisper by an insurance company and wsm stood for we serve millions and the grand ole opry began as a country music review and oldest we started country music world and bluegrass comes along in nineteen forties film on road with lester flatt host gretchen regulars at the grand ole opry southern music was heard by huge numbers of people and they're one of the biggest audiences was in the north for the grand ole opry really have any idea why world war two we were to have a massive population shift in america out of the south by both blacks and whites to work in factories in the north places like detroit places like cleveland places like pittsburgh up places like gary indiana

of those places become hotbeds of bluegrass music because those are people who are now dislocated much as i'm sure will get the blues much as the blues went up the mississippi and stuff to chicago detroit and stuff because of huge black population chips so things like bluegrass and traditional country music they had huge audiences in urban north and for that matter in california or in wichita or there were defense plants because these were people who'd been ripped out of their culture but bluegrass oral time now music for four that were things that appeal to them but that bill monroe's music was very rare but it was also very moderate path elements of jazz and so just like those people live in a new world between urban industrial world and the rural roots bill monroe's music is rooted in rural roots music but it's funny old fashioned radio hear a

beautiful radio and adventuresome for the people involved in macon who was made up to look like an overly chatty than when he was in his twenties he had white hair and glasses and stuff because i was as character minnie pearl my father was the entertainer histories and research our way and chet atkins real haggard willie nelson had to climb the grand ole opry and eighteen nineteen eighties and it has to have that three times the musicians we're listening to each other on you know charlie parker listen to die one barrio of our country music

on it duke ellington once said there's only two kinds of music you said good music and the other kind of people are listening to the bill monroe was influenced heavily by a black fiddle player in the nineteen twenties when he bought one risk and lester flatt and scruggs special scrubbed were clearly listening to jazz arm and one thing he's committed or cinematic terms of these parallel tracks of white and black music is a nineteen forties you've got jazz transitioning to a great extent from big band dance music smaller bebop emphasizing instrumental soloist virtuosity dizzy gillespie charlie parker and so forth or country music you've got to bridge the old time country music as was functional music for dancing and people play fiddles and banjos and he played to the rhythm never change and they played a too that would offer twenty nine people danced to bluegrass music was not for dance it was for listening and it

emphasized instrumental virtuosity it's almost know musically lots of differences but in terms of the kind of function going from dancing to listening going from the group's sound to a sound real our individuality has been expressed both of those are in there with all these things and we think you know there are a ball of twine with that there's a lot of constraints and you can unravel them in lots of different directions and for example i'm looking across a warm room were stunned by bluegrass looking across its sacred and gospel and gospel singing and gospel vocals were a huge part of bluegrass music with the one road with lester flatt restaurants effect for gospel song girl put down the banjo and play guitar and you had three part vocal harmonies which were clearly derive from blacksburg to music of the south so what's

overt political asylum we've got native americans are stuffed here and out of africa and out of the british say in the songs and so forth out of new england and it to be quite honest the things that had the most impact on most american roots of brutal music was the african roots ah certainly though the shape note singing and in fact i was just turned shape note singing in new bedford massachusetts the folk festival was last week and this year in lawrence and oshea tow center's overreacted clearly that there but i threw it at the heaviest emphasis on american music was the african spiritual music to a great extent because you bring up who call and response you bring in a heavily rhythmic stuff you bring in the use of percussion and drums and around the corner i see we've got to keep people insured and the toughest courses big picture of bothered the way the father of bluegrass the father of gospel music

and it's something i didn't know what all that precious lord take my hand he took a white him and put new words to it put new cortines and i'm not my experience it in technical music played was not a very good saxophone player a long time ago who studied enough harmony deep enough musical theory about that i would like to be a real musician but there certainly is a style bills big fat juicy gospel chords so what you've got you've got african singing tradition to get the european piano and you've got than the golden gate quartet and then you go down to other gospel singing and bluegrass musicians have always listen to that you listened to a lot of the quicksilver gospel singing nationalist and the whole album for gospel blues so that's the

daily caller at yale you mentioned music and reflect on all of this is that it is an accordion in a discotheque already has been sort of prototypical dance hall instrument because it's loud in here portable yet and that's in the centerpiece of her banjo but accordion even more so because you've got the coral possible it's like a piano or with an accordion yeah it's really interesting on one of my first great actresses irish trip for traditional irish music ever people think traditional irish music they tend to think of three instruments the fiddle the band has i could think of harper's but let's dance music and more the irish constitution but the fiddle banjo

the accordion over the fatal i was around in the british isles with these tools are being written what happened is as you began to move out of just doing house parties as the kitchen worth it was cloudy well it began to have larger dances in ireland he did dance halls before they're with amplification like there's not any louder estimates more typical from the banjo which irish immigrants encounter africans african americans slave or freedom in america back in the eighteen twenty thirties forties fifties and some of them moved back to iraq the band or they found it could play fiddle to buildings on the banjo player and then also irish american immigrants or an encounter immigrants from germany and then broadened that prompted korea and dance troop buildup of working

class people and again some audience and product recording episode of american music can also reflect back at traditional music in other countries because the traditional music critic of the british isles with accordion players and banjo players will portables us would come from america but it really is this exhibit it's so called the accordion because if you think the accordion gusher summer to the various bureaus polka bands of central europeans are great extent recordings came to new orleans are a french canadian city of a very large fraction of the population of new england jacksonville from lhasa still lives but especially so on back in the early twentieth century in maine massachusetts and so when when french canadian music from that according to tell when music western swing before the band the big enough to

have piano recordings ah klezmer where to send its traditional jewish voters as i'm recording so it's a very versatile and it's been used once a different american roots music and again for dancing and a lot of american roots music of star ultimate up what about music is oriented towards dancing i always think it's funny when i hear a traditional music presented concert halls which can be fined over great traditional music and concert halls and the audience just kind of sits there are only politely and it's not polling music and it's not really meant to be experienced about a surly you're dancing but movement and feedback and dumb at all that this is this is pretty out this is a pretty good thing i'd mention

cajun music be possible decided tell overture to wipe a traditional cajun music in the american blues and put that that's that's pretty cool what political perilous thing as an attack ad and the recovery that han of culture arts and culture are and in texas you get this combination of an american country music blues music together and a lot of risk as recruiting americans come out is this classical music jazz or an

arm of the appalachians to a great extent on again because this collision of world whirl the irish touch music and black music plays new york city to a critically low cover the taxes is a recent tech has them all the most fertile music scenes in america odd for the last thirty or forty years is again you've got cultural lending and you've got musicians you know musicians were breaking down barriers of race and culture in america long long before other people were you know grow was hang out and play music with black musicians in the nineteen twenties and kentucky are jazz musicians in chicago or new york or playing together white and black sometimes were whites and whites in other professions never in character never come to this sequence and you've got that going on in music and that's really is also the case with the zydeco or to homs so far we've been talking all about the new harmonies exhibit itself but there's also a whole separate component of this a series of

concerts and community activities going on it's well again mike walton we heard mention the wok or lose not a great job of putting all these bands and groups together and speakers and i really needed that help koppelman in addition says she and her staff and volunteers are put together a local exhibit called raise them for example was highlighted in that supports history douglas county history which is really the purpose of this museum is to exhibit that count the turtle and we got all records we've got the signs of a red dog all things so most of her and then over the years and has given us a presentation to sell let's check in with the exhibit courtenay are an archivist at the watkins museum helen crazy we felt because we have lawrence community has such a

long history of music in the community that we should try to tell people about the history and because we can paul gray who is a great position here and he handed jas place and now of course we had a lot of local bands in the sixties and seventies and now it's come around again to where we have a lot of indie rock bands also getting their start here there's a lot of sheet music here some musical instruments on display what we got here and this is the moment it still works so uneven swinging year lease and so yeah those

working at a radio station i've seen a lot of recording equipment in my time but i've never seen one of these before the record el how and what is that they were able to make their own records at home and i'm this and at slowly is the one who owns this recording your breath and down he actually sang country western music and he recorded himself and this is a cd that the family made from one of his recordings houses i don't know i haven't listened to it i'm i was told that it's about the same quality as other you know seventy eight europeans have been the thing with helen christie sees the exhibit's coordinator an archivist for the watkins museums bought that got to the main part of the new harmony think that baseball and then the great folk scare in the sixties the nineteen sixties revival

this especially to look at the chorus they've got bob dylan who clearly came out of the woody guthrie titian that god peter paul and mary a brilliantly managed to become top forty musicians huge record sellers and stuff all but at the same time they remain very true that they're committed to social justice and folk music but they were clearly a packaged group and this was a group that was it was put together and i'm aaron rehearsed and planned was that with a marketing campaign pierpont marriages of the marketing of the most successful market but when joan baez who all comes out of the late nineteen fifties new purple festival manager usually vital supply classic picture here book festival here call a very jolly guy is bob dylan's all holding hands and say of course he makes year republicans out what are a lot of people in a purple vest were not so happy with that thing to hear pete seeger

but this is interesting i'm at the kingston trio are here as well and they mention the city's revival really that starts in the late fifties and relief group with the kingston trio doing a very meticulous way a very smooth out versions of folk songs all he had just polished off this is not like white musicians in the fifties covering the music of people like little richard and stuff like that but smoothing the edges off and sonic of the folk scare come from college kids with with striped shirts play guitar banjo and singing stop the sound and even then a little corny are was very popular but it digs into some of the rig but then you got people like you know bob dylan joan baez come along with audio and preachers holding musical this is joan baez goes back to the old balance of scotland and ireland england and since i'm in this gorgeous voice up your poem very same and that clearly influenced a lot of record poppy musical we think that was really modern american singer songwriters is this era it's bob dylan

and so happens that just before i came down to see cookie and i had on on one of the actual settlers says the bob dylan has a show called the meantime radio hour and every we use it's an hour show and he picks a talk this week with the move actually starts off with charlie parker doing a bebop tune based on the chord changes to how high the moon that he goes to les paul and mary ford doing how high the moon that goes in all directions but when you listen to bob dylan to that show you to hear pop music you're gonna hear jazz or blues or could your country music about her polka music year all the stuff and down he absorbed all of that before he created bob dylan was he pulled walters together it's a great extent he's a great person to have here someone that forged a new path and individualistic at an impasse which really upset a lot

of people again we'd plug into play in rock and roll or parents were like really how do you do those things and it's also tricky problems with bluegrass curious very doubtful one long haired kids to the new grass revival started playing rock and roll music with bluegrass instruments called new grass revival a set that stuff like bluegrass or blues musicians people like the word blue say how could be became politically guitar that's not really blues music or these guys are going to start planning the rolling stones houses of blues music when he could take every one of these musical things here and they're curious we're very upset if they go out of the box of that particular style of music was really about american roots music it's the musicians themselves on how the box they were always combined recombine it's like it's like all these things are

different threads of the musical dna and there's tension anything that is in any way connected american pop music resort it's got the dna of all the stops bob thank you so much for coming down to give if it's been such a pleasure that plus k thanks a lot for let's close with some music that reflects many of these musical traditions and appalachian ballad which once the musical influences of bluegrass jazz gospel and celtic high end mountain pedigree the wayfaring strangers aired a snack and

you didn't it's soon stays reigns oh waning singing monday is a

long and new harmonies a smithsonian institution traveling exhibit now on display at the watkins community museum of history in downtown lawrence it will remain on display through august tenth when it will travel to independence kansas mcpherson and acheson it's part of the museum's on main street program a collaboration between the smithsonian institution and the federation of state humanities councils and sponsored by the kansas humanities council now for a look at what's happening at another area museum we turn to mark wilson he's the director of the nelson atkins museum in kansas city missouri mark welcome to the program i occasionally you are doing great it's just a year since the big grand opening of the bloch building just an idea where your arm it's amazing i expected we would get some new pretty good

criticism you know mostly positive if you brickbats from somebody else and you got up and wrongs of the bed but this is amazing because it's been one hundred percent positive from all over the world i'd be i thought well in some ways this is a no activity in my lifetime i cannot recall a building that had been so well received as this one doesn't matter if it's syria important american publications but german publications british publications china gingrich pan where the most prestigious publications are all covered extensively glowing you a new paradigm new year this is the year of the way of the future require remarkable take it out the other day not too long ago a copy of an article from an iranian publication of gaza could read it but anyway i you know it was a very friendly very friendly review

about the why the building was for some instruction i have a pleasure speaking with you and how about what he had in mind for the building would you just remind us what was his vision for the building wealth through his vision took off from the idea that would be light and to contrast his in his notion he knew how to get in which is the nelson no it was a wonderful beautiful big heavy pretty assertive pretty compact and sometimes it causes severe you know it's weird the plainness of its wars no he had in mind so it was light and airy and would be the opposite of that yet worked together with him he also had a problem with what has this perfect building and then added onto highway out on tour without messing up and so he just went outside and bury his building so that was quite progressive that was from an architectural perspective so the big issues he had to deal with and i'm going down the side i understand was completely

opposite of iran all intents and it was he was the opposite of what the the original architect's adjusted for expansion they suggest you're you put a couple wings out on your side make the courtyard no look like an italian pee outside the steam to something very different and i think he did write one to go down the downside to avoid covering up those iconic facades in and the community said to stephen if you knesset those sides to obscure them or block them when you turn thirty and they said that i'm a tucson where we just you know we respect and but a testiness and bred and for me it's it concentrates uses new ideas for creating space it flows a movie and you're always use those things are changing i liken it to him did you canoe trip here down or swallow river here in trees and to use water services faster slower pace than you

can see what's around the band so you you have to create a world where time is suspended an ordinary idea about space being cubes are boxes of rectangles all that's gone and replaced by this flow of space as you get into the flow of that here you see a little bit further ahead a bit you're not quite sure we are going what's going to be there when i get there is always changing so when you get there as differently and then the next one was created so that as a very rich rich experience in the most important thing is that it allows a visitor it shows off the ark unlike many new art museum built it really does and that's for me not us my goal is it the architecture should create an environment that positively supports a visitor's mentality the visitors stay and mud so the visitors ready to engage writer looking really have a wonderful time looking up that's you know one of the things that i found really intriguing about the bloch building is that you can come

in and out of it that it's designed to be a kind of an indoor outdoor experience and what's the thinking behind that there are several layers to think you know and that first of all on the nelson sits in his wonderful part not that many museums any advantage of all that space and layered and there's thirty at least thirty very goods cultures outside and i wanted something that allowed you to go from there inside experience and so expansive restructured do you use can't run around you can't but she works of art i want you to be able to enter into flow between the casual outside experience in the park with trees with the squash with the pathways with the grass that casual aside and day more structure experience so if you get the suit attire to be a museum an hour have you looked hard and have a good time that your brains fall sein you break a discuss it and it's meant to two to magnify into multiply the effect

of the experience of both by allowing you to move from the outside to the inside from inside back to the outside you know i think that so interesting you put it that way because i know in my impetus to last night concert before the bloch building was was billed you'd go to the inside and steal to pay for them by the time you retired you were ready to leave you you know you maybe just went in and i did go outside and just imagine if you have a year old eleven year old with you and they're going to address it by half an hour and so one that they'll go outside around boston steam who looks in anymore sculptures or any of the other great to our south boston the parks are seen to me it was a great way instead of separating these century museum into a bank was that it was a museum have to be back it doesn't think about the second dog was a museum it to be like a bank banks are changing things anymore so as museum after quarterback and why can't

you go from inside outside if you designed it right you saw the security issues of the center of those so is it a question of thinking different in designing and people use it soaked going out there seven different sentences to nelson help support free that's very important well you can't do that you had gathered every entrance he had to have somebody give you take it and take some money or check your membership by dea something like that so it works if it's free if you think about you know you just touch on something that i think it's so wonderful about the north american sweet very few museums can brag about nowadays announced that it is very tense and then never any serious attempt to do to change that we're always tended to change it is not for profit always need money wilson's no exception being if you just it's just as these the way is the way of life with the nonprofit organizations so el nino is his oars pressure are but it depends on how important to you and for me it's very important

and it has to do with the way i view our american society and i think that his citizens' right just by virtue of being a citizen to have access to the greatest achievements of humankind now we expect students in school now i can access but there're so of course is in here we teach the great achievements of mathematics which is a rare achievement in literature and expression verbal expression written expression we teach grade achievements in other areas and so for me why shouldn't you have unencumbered access to the greatest achievements of visual expression just as the way we have libraries are free for the greatest achievements know i immediately alive or it's much easier to replicate this week ahmed yale shakespeare in our library for about fifteen dollars no matter where i live but you can't all have a rembrandt so we have in this country

why concrete museum center cities scattered across the country we find a great encyclopedic museum and instances lucky to have one of the very best in the nelson both interscope and so what it collects a zoo and what the nelson is known for is yet those works or to be seen the really cry out we walk in a room you may not know anything about italian seventeenth century painter you look at that ancient oh while that doesn't mean i'm leaving the chinese are you look at that bolling said my god that's beautiful yellow say why don't need to know it but those things that really matter that have that presence of force and that's your last weekend collector nelson i'm not really interested frankly to just filling up of you agreed with examples like or that you would insist next collection of a natural history museum you're one of these were these were these years i collecting shells you can this thing after actually became a show that we know about and i don't believe that's a case with an art museum i want but i don't

need no need to know anything about a really great things that matter to people and one of the ways that you have really re thought the nelson i know that in conjunction with this block construction is to reconfigure the museum and re think how items are glued together and in the parade makes all the difference in the world if i show you a room of just all one thing i won't be able to get ahead of a day which dynamic that engages you could julia will glaze over but if i can introduce him to that room they dynamic of different kinds of things that are related by time and place that say the sale frank shoot things in the eighteenth century have a particular look and so a french silver shaker the us over the angry can relate to a french painter same period can relate to or sculpture so they all begin to work together as opposed to separate by class and then they'll work together

so well they don't give you the variety and they don't give you that energy that dynamism that comes from shifting from a from this piece of silver to the painting next door to the sculpture behind you and i just didn't give you more ways of engaging and gauging your own energy around the usual capacity to say oh i get it they way they did their decoration on the piece of furniture that looks like the way they've gone the lady's skirt it makes for a much more much much as a richer interview many more opportunities what i'm trying to do is find a window or a door is mean so you can walk through i don't know who you are i know you have a background and i have experience and area preferences and i can construct multiply the number of doris they're available one of those just might work for you if i only had three doors there's the switch up to provide sixteen i just made it much more likely that as one of those can be iffy

much of the strategy does it doesn't do violence to the idea that history but puts our history and williams plays as a cool not as a goal and what is the goal goals for you have a good experience and your terms and a good rich visual experience that will lead you into other areas you might be ancient history religion or culture or somehow like that or you you may be just an art group in use like art a cigar that role pritzker okay the first thing is that the jokes that sort of news we get richer and more opportunity for you who got to make the court look up or indeed when you're like even their director at another twenty or twenty five years it's definitely changed in the way directors of art museum see the function of an art museum over the course of twenty five years or how would you describe that i think nelson so unusual in that

we concentrate very much a focus on your experience and that we know the experience is complicated because you're compare so we tend in our new displays to make these with seemingly more complicated installations <unk> you do have furniture together with painting and setting painting separated from furniture separate from sculpture and so forth in that sense concentrating on experience in trying to understand what will allow you or give you the most likelihood of having good experience and something that the nelson is a leader in anywhere in the nation and also i think too much on display and you redo it's not about every little connection in the art history it's not the ones that really matter i think it too many b class or c

class or two aren't like so how do you decide big ones make a tough it's our aesthetic impact him back to the eye the projectile the example of the seventeenth century italy in the counter reformation is there were thousands thousands of paintings of the virgin only child that harmony those remove you not everyone yet they're motivated by exactly the same theological please think and you feel the same way they're only a few of them actually move you and make you feel differently about the war but yourself sorcerers once they remove you and i remember those the ones that i believe should be on the walls and these hymns least to nelson we're visiting with mark wilson the director of the nelson atkins museum in kansas city mark you've been telling us about this incredible new wing the bloch building at the nelson atkins which is celebrating its first anniversary this summer

but you're obviously not content to just rest on your laurels we finished the bloch building and then moved immediately to demolish about one half of a florida nelson and got it marcia took it out of nineteen thirty three shall not believe they're putting in as we speak putting an area a new american wing be composed of your traditional american art until from the pilgrims on down and then the other part of it is an american indie and i think that will be very very interesting the american part will be all about sixty percent and imagining it would be about forty percent of the space and so there you go much better picture of our own country in the arab world countries as to be you know the pilgrims and one side begins in the other thanksgiving table and the dvd reckoning in a display will open in the fall and

promises to be i think the largest i hope will be the best exhibition of american indian or laying any gentle arms in country now there are a couple of bigger displays chicago field museum as a state passed a display of mecca and you know you take that out and remove the specialized busy and like a herd clerks recommended this will be the largest display of mccain entered any general art museum larger certainly than anything new york or boston or chicago or los angeles and other spaces they're not somebody owns yes and also owns many of them already in the weeping clicking that indian arts and stir before the museum opened everything else so we better for over seventy years then also we fully year in immediately established an independent department but five years go hire a very very good curator really very energetic very persuasive

and he has been able to add really important pieces to the collection so and to get the entire country thinking kansas city's center of american indian art which is great and so between the two between our traditional clutching activision reason collecting activities you'll see some of their aid best examples of american indian art held in the country still and it will be on display in his very sweet italian modern cases it's not for us as we collect because of its aesthetic eye not because it's at the political battle says that apology this is about the aesthetic sensibility an individual who made something that stands out above the you know the the usual run of the mill within that type the director of shield for example there's leather mark shields leather around but this one is ice it's gotten says it's it shows a buffalo looking out at future than an unusual and if the council were getting ready to equipping were given up

just magnificent incredible but it's all about this lady aesthetic sensibility of the people made these rather than about peer group your hairdo say wars america so that's why we tried it it will be i think quite an eye opener you'll go away with totally different perception of american indian art something else and the nelson atkins future i'm really excited about an exhibit opening this fall are in the age of steam and i have to tell you mark i think this is an exhibit that i could even get my father in law to it and it takes a look about how the railroad became a subject for our ears all across the world and has very be enshrined in european of paris liverpool kansas city didn't matter you is an age that was chanted by the railroad in one way it was he was dirty to travel by railroaded especially the beginning these characters were open the other's smoke cinders falling down on you things like that but they quickly became very fast very

glamorous baby wheeze to dress up to an empty dining cars were famous for the quality of service and the food and so he became a romantic thing a very romantic thing as a sign of modernity and everything being for progressively railroad more than anything else was a sign of modernity and progress and that in turn used affected the there'd be the image that whole societies have held themselves above the stranger now cut the distance for trump ordinary people was affordable it was fast you could get from europe chicago overnight and i was amazing and you could sleep all the way have feathers real book so this became the de lory and romance a rare and it was a nice subject for artists they want to capture something in their style of art something that was which you you made that aggressive as well so is all

about the railroad from the very beginning and the famous artists and if it as wells are she'd never heard of an artist from all of the world in this exhibition so it's it shows you right up to the time when the railroad was pushed out gone for passenger travel by the interstate system and by the employer so it's from the beginning and to the great irish monet's great monet painted a whole series of flow road stations in paris so their solos and it's very interesting things the great art puts great cost nbc always be people in the costumes they wore in those days but with no no offense to my father like what evidence actually peeling about does exhibit at least i see it is i'm healing is they it can dry and people that aren't necessarily are lovers figures in and solve all over a boss absolutely and refrigerator i drive to work in the morning along a railroad track about ten miles

evidently they stray into something lovable about trains i don't what it is that element as vocal training camps if you look really is but there's something about the trainers as lovable and and that you know the thing to send me is that there's a whole generation of people who probably never had a train ride and i was grabbed little boy that's really when some place long distance interview dr there are people who never had that experience years of wonderful experience to agree with us train trip i had was to northern china what a wonderful way to see the countryside you never ever have gotten under current search area in a car not not that character that was true primo bus up country so i think people will enjoy this and of course you know things everybody likes that was

so i think as that group a train buffs that interim many many different levels that exhibit art in the age of steam opens in september you just mentioned china mark i know chinese art is your particular specialty and there's an exhibit of chinese art on display at the nelson atkins right now that you put together with some help from ten university of kansas art history graduate students tell us about the project i didn't want to just do it and wanted them to work with real works of art and said being a classroom and they have slides are all cars very different thing you have to take into account what's happened to him over the years to teach him to look at learning to look at a work of art to get more out of an aesthetically that's one thing but also to look at it to understand it and ultimate what's happened over the years has been repaired or is repaired until it changes what's its history what is life was work of art as a life look at my perspective

to teach them more about about trying to to understand dr by looking in different ways or was there is really trying to do is what it appears that yours is something beyond that are meant to try to advance their research skills as another goal so to really understand the art look at daredevil even when they have been and instead of coming up with a research paper here which would be well probably pretty good but still there's a research paper that will probably not change things very much i am or an exercise of let's do something that really matters that really matters let's do an exhibition though actually helps nelson that so you're this is for real as i said to them this is not a drill that exhibit senses and sensibility of work continue on display until february two thousand nine i'd like to close today with a last look at the new block building and how it opened up the grounds of the nelson atkins museum

if you can get down there during the day or even if you can come back in the evening that outside of the block building and the sculpture garden is really a lovely place to visit at night to use the park you all the time whenever anybody wants to be out there a park is open twenty four hours a day and we keep the lights on the buildings are lion a night so that you can get out and walk through them and mosey and down through your family the experience of walking through the lenses of nice nature columns and chant so unlike anywhere else and then you walk out into the grass and sit down next to a sculpture look back at those urges and chatted glowing blocks it's it's really great any time but it's really special emphasis known over the place like in your house going on the planet at night and let people out there all hours and i think this summit is groovy and

others got the dogs out for a late night walk people got the law that really start paddling the walls do believe that if they were no it's a single in this whole building until things going if it's dark outside the set vance remains a glass planks and step back and look i'm going to touch and you see that and then often and we silhouetted against the glowing classy see yourself a slower and i give you differences you'll see yourself as round anymore it's too self is a little cuts were changed into action action for a tape other people what might just the door and so you're people thought i think we've shifted our schedule so we have more summertime partisan approach where people like it so much speaking of those hours the nelson atkins is open tuesdays and wednesdays from ten to four thursdays and fridays from ten in til nine pm on saturdays from ten til five on sundays from new until five and closed on

mondays we've been visiting with mark wilson the director of the nelson atkins museum in kansas city missouri mark thanks so much for coming in today thank you very much for having me i'm kate mcintyre kbr presents is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas