The Nelson-Atkins' Bloch Building: As good as it gets

The question that matters isn't 'Is Steven Holl's Bloch Building at Kansas City's Nelson-Atkins Museum any good?' it's 'How great is it?'

The answer comes easily: Pretty great. If there has been a better American museum building built since Renzo Piano's Menil Collection 20 years ago, I haven't been there. (And this is probably better then the Piano.) Over the course of this week I'll post photos of the building and I'll use them to try to explain why I think the Bloch Building is such a triumph.

My plan for seeing the Bloch Building was twofold: Spend a day at the museum, spend the evening before outside it. (NYTer Nicolai Ouroussoff did this too.) So about 45 minutes before sunset, I parked in front of a Henry Moore and began to walk. In front of the Nelson-Atkins' flagship 1933 Beaux-Arts building, a dozen yuppies were playing flag football. Just about no one else was around. I wandered through the Kansas City Sculpture Park, enjoying a dozen Moores, a couple of Craggs, an out-of-place Nelson, the Oldenbruggen Shuttlecocks, and so on. All lovely, but mostly I was there to check out the Bloch Building.

In the last few minutes of full daylight Holl's building seemed to be as much a glass pile as museum's main building is an Indiana limestone pile, only whiter and cleverer. But as the sun began to set, a couple things happened: The building lit up. It lost weight. It gave away a second set of secrets (more on that as the week goes on).

The young men playing flag football stopped and stared. Out of nowhere about half a dozen photographers materialized, tripods at the ready. A taxi drove up, stopped, and out ran a man with a digital camera. He ran around snapping snapping, and then jogged back to his cab. Kids rolled through on bikes -- not privileged kids from the ritzy neighborhoods to the east of the museum, but city kids. The photographers and the yuppie football players treated the new building with reverence, but these kids rode their bikes right up to it. They touched it, tapped it, yelled , "Hey, it's glass!" They parked their bikes and ran around the exceptional Mark Di Suvero that sits in front of the Bloch Building -- which seems just right because Rumi reminds me of a whirling dervish.

I walked away from the front of the building, down along it's length, north-to-south. The Sculpture Park's lawn, which had been pretty quiet except for the footballers, was suddenly full of couples enjoying an evening stroll. (In most cities couples stroll at sunset, I think. Well not here, not anymore.) Everyone was looking at the Bloch Building, talking about it. Even before I had been inside the new Nelson-Atkins, I was sold.

More on the building all week, starting here.