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The museum is in Kansas City near the Country Club Plaza, it was founded by the estates of the founder of the Kansas City Star, William Rockhill Nelson, and a widowed school teacher named Mary Mcafee Atkins who had her husband's real estate fortune. The museum has over 35, 000 pieces and usually has over half a million visitors a year. The Nelson-Atkins had had a rough year with the pandemic, like so many institutions, but this museum in particular seems to be handling all of the issues of this year somewhat poorly.

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Presented by Kansas City DJ and Dj Ice Kole, Juneteenth Live features music by Charlotte Fletcher of Charlotte Fletcher & Soigne, Amber "Flutienastiness" Underwood, and Lee Langston with Desmond Mason; poetry by Glenn North; stories from George Pettigrew and Ajia & Phoenix Grae Morris; and dance from Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey. Check it out on our website: https://nelson-atkins.org/nelson-atkins-at-home/juneteenth/#junteenth-live

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Presented by Kansas City DJ and Dj Ice Kole, Juneteenth Live features music by Charlotte Fletcher of Charlotte Fletcher & Soigne, Amber "Flutienastiness" Underwood, and Lee Langston with Desmond Mason; poetry by Glenn North; stories from George Pettigrew and Ajia & Phoenix Grae Morris; and dance from Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey.

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The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

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I was unable to find any sort of list of the staff members who were laid off, so it is hard to tell what departments they came from or if any particular demographic was affected most, but these things tend to affect minorities and low-level and low-tenured employees most. Comments on the museum Facebook page suggest that security staff may have seen reductions.  The website has job postings for visitor services position, but nothing else. There are no internships listed. The Nelson-Atkins is connected to the Kansas City Art Institute (it's across the street), so the lack of  even remote opportunities for students is troubling along with everything else going on.  The museum appears to be trying to continue the appearance of a valuable community resource while not necessarily being a good community member or place to work.  I was happy to see the efforts being made to expand online resources, but many of those ended as soon as the museum could open its door again even though in-person classes aren't resuming. With covid-19 cases very high in the Kansas City area, but a vaccine on the horizon, it will be interesting to see how the Nelson-Atkins handles the next year and if the Kansas City community comes back.

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Online exhibits and tours. Links to videos and lectures.

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Welcome to Nelson-Atkins@Home!

LOOK -closely at your favorite objects and a vast library of videos on our YouTube channel.

LEARN -something new, enjoy our participation in Google Arts & Culture project, and access stay-at-home educational tools.

LISTEN -to curators, story tellers, playlists, and history makers.

CREATE -through inspiration and resources from our collection, educators, artists and community partners.

Nelson-Atkins@Home also offers a virtual museum experience of robust content centered around different themes and cultural festivals. You'll discover art activities, music, artist presentations, history, connections to the Nelson-Atkins collection, and so much more. Explore at your own pace, at any time of the day.

This year, the Nelson-Atkins Día de los Muertos festival goes virtual. While the museum may not be able to build a collaborative altar and celebrate with you in person, we express our deep gratitude to the artists, performers, and local leaders who have shared their time and talents throughout the past 10 years.
More

Past Themes and Cultural Festivals

Learn more about Deaf culture and American Sign Language (ASL) from Deaf artists, poets, and storytellers through art activities, ASL storytelling and performances.
More

This focus page expands on the in-gallery exhibition, Gordon Parks x Muhammad Ali: The Image of a Champion, 1966/1970.
More

Enjoy a virtual commemoration of Juneteenth with visual and literary arts, music, entertainment, and education.
More

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Nelson-Atkins@Home also offers a virtual museum experience of robust content centered around different themes and cultural festivals. You'll discover art activities, music, artist presentations, history, connections to the Nelson-Atkins collection, and so much more. Explore at your own pace, at any time of the day.

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Nov 23rd “It’s like a hospital laying off doctors.”

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Nov 23rd “It’s like a hospital laying off doctors.”

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"Since spring 2016, 11 curators have left or were cut from their positions at the Nelson-Atkins, amounting to a reduction of more than 50 percent. They include the former heads of African art, Chinese art, Native American art, photography, contemporary art, decorative arts and ancient art. To date, none of those positions has been filled, and the museum is now in a hiring freeze “as part of the museum’s sustainability framework,” according to deputy director of curatorial affairs, William Keyse Rudolph.  " Despite the layoffs in all of these departments, the museum still has pretty extensive collections in all of these areas, particularly in Chinese, and African art, and photography. The trend towards never replacing curators seems reckless for an institution that is renown for these collections. While the pandemic has precipitated layoffs, the term layoff implies that staff may come back to work at some point but given the Nelson-Atkins' recent history of not-replacing staff, it seem unlikely that all of those positions will return even if the pandemic ended this year.

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Officials Cite Need for Sustainability in the Face of a Petition and Other Criticisms

The museum announced Oct ober 21 that it was trimming its staff by 15 percent and reducing its budget by 25 percent, to about $26 million, due to the "debilitating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic."

In a news release, t he museum said donors had continued to be generous with private donations , and that it had secured a Payroll Protection Program loan, but its six-month (mid-March to mid-September) closure due to COVID had cut off revenue it would have received from event rentals, fundraisers, ticketing, the Rozelle Court Restaurant, parking fees and merchandise sales.

Even after re-opening, the museum was suffering from the impacts of "dramatically lower" attendance and the cancellation of all traveling exhibitions, in-person tours, classes, public programs and festivals, the release said.

"Any decision to reduce the size of the staff must be the last resort ," Richard C. Green, chair of the Nelson-Atkins Board of Trustees, said in the release. "The staff members of the Nelson-Atkins keep our institution's mission thriving, and they ensure that the museum is a cultural treasure in Kansas City. Unfortunately, we are not immune to the same forces that businesses and other nonprofit organizations have faced during this difficult year. These steps are being taken to ensure the museum's long-term sustainability."

Davis said he had tried to save Aspinwall's position but to no avail. "As a consequence, I resigned my position as the museum's s enior c urator of p hotography , " he said.

The photography department now is down to one curator, Davis said. "I very sincerely wish the new department well ," he added.

Art critic and historian Tyler Green expressed dismay about the Nelson-Atkins cuts in a Nov. 4 tweet. Green said "Aspinwall ranks among America's top curators and historians of 19thC photography," and that the layoffs represented "a spectacularly horrid institutional self-destruction. The N-A has long had one of America's top photography departments. Now two-thirds of it is gone."

The foundation said Davis "led the further development of this collection that now contains over 15,000 images and is regarded as one of the finest collections of photography in the country."

Mayra Aguir r e, president of the Hall Family Foundation, said in the release that the foundation has "great confidence that the Nelson-Atkins will continue to build on the legacy of this photography collection."

"While we do our best to create a safe environment for visitors to engage with our collection, we are placed in an unstable, unsafe position by a lack of equity and transparency in decision-making," the introduction to the petition states. "This was made devastatingly clear by the sudden announcement of a reduction of force, when 36 of our fellow workers found their positions terminated without warning in the midst of a global pandemic."

Prioritize safety for staff, with a path to personal, physical and financial safety in the face of the Coronavirus pandemic, by ensuring that no further layoffs are made through Fiscal Year 2021.

Be transparent in decision-making, starting by giving staff a seat at the table in meetings that explain criteria for budgeting decisions both in Fiscal Year 2020 and planning for Fiscal Year 2021.

Wilson said the museum h as been laying off staff, including curators, for several years. "It's like a hospital laying off doctors."

Kemper Museum closed due to COVID from March 14 until Oct ober 21 , but Carroll said it's difficult to compare the Nelson-Atkins Museum to Kemper Museum because the Nelson-Atkins is so much larger. "We're in the same neighborhood , and we serve the same population, but they are quite different as far as scale goes. I think that's reflected in our financial considerations."

Julián Zugazagoitia , Nelson-Atkins director and CEO, said the layoffs had been "unfortunate," and constituted a "very difficult and very hard decision to make. But we had to do those hard decisions to maintain the ecosystem of the museum, to continue doing our mission. "

When asked to respond to Davis' resignation, Zugazagoitia said Davis is a "great curator. He created the collection that Hallmark gave to the museum that we are very, very proud of, and he should be very proud too. "

Regarding Wilson's criticism about cuts to the curatorial staff, Zugazagoitia said "the program speaks for itself. The museum is the function of a lot of people in a very intellectual and a very professional way. You see it manifested through exhibitions, public programs, lectures. "

Zugazagoitia said if not for COVID , the museum would have had 600,000 visitors during the fiscal year that ended April 30. " It was our best year ever. When I started at this museum almost 10 years ago, we had 300,000 visitors. So , I would let visitors speak for themselves."

Amid the ongoing pandemic and all the tumult surrounding the layoffs, Zugazagoitia hopes the public will come back to the Nelson-Atkins Museum.

Julius A. Karash is a freelance writer, editor and public relations person. He formerly was a business reporter for the Kansas City Star and executive editor of KC Business magazine. He devours business and economic news, and is keenly interested in the relationship between arts and economic development in the Kansas City area.

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Nelson-Atkins Lays Off 36 Employees Prompting Pushback - KC STUDIO

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The museum announced Oct ober 21 that it was trimming its staff by 15 percent and reducing its budget by 25 percent, to about $26 million, due to the "debilitating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic."

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Nov 5th Senior curator resigns in protest over the layoff of his colleague. 

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Nov 5th Senior curator resigns in protest over the layoff of his colleague. 

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Keith Davis sent out an email to museum world colleagues that he had spent the previous ten days since the announced layoffs petitioning the museum to keep his colleague Jane Aspinwall. Both curators have worked to develop the museum's extensive photography collection which now holds more than 15, 000 images. Jane Aspinwall had been at the museum for fourteen years, longer than Keith Davis had been and he pointed out. Ms. Aspinwall is an expert in 19th century photography and Mr. Davis became the senior curator is 2009. The museum had three photography curators before the layoffs and now has one.

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A widely recognised senior curator of photography at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri has resigned to protest the elimination of a fellow photography curator's job amid staff cuts.

The top curator, Keith F. Davis, told museum world colleagues in an email that he had "spent 10 intense days" arguing for the retention of Jane L. Aspinwall, a scholar of 19th-century photography, after the Nelson-Atkins announced 36 layoffs on 21 October. On Monday, he says, he was informed that his efforts had not succeeded, and he therefore resigned as senior curator of photography.

"This was utterly unexpected for a whole host of reasons, including the fact that Jane has the longest tenure in our department, has the deepest knowledge of the collection, has done a series of brilliant projects and, not incidentally, the fact that our department was funded by outside money from the generous Hall Family Foundation," he wrote in an email to art world colleagues. Both Davis and Aspinwall joined the Nelson-Atkins after it acquired the acclaimed Hallmark Photographic Collection as a gift from the foundation in late 2005.

In a brief interview, Davis said, "This was worth fighting all the way to the cliff."

The Nelson-Atkins announced last month that it was eliminating the 36 positions, or 15% of its staff, in response to a nosedive in revenue related to the coronavirus pandemic. It cited lost income from event rentals, fundraisers, its restaurant, parking fees and gift shop sales after it closed on 14 March in response to contagion, as well as sharply lower attendance since it reopened on 12 September. The museum has no general admissions charge.

The museum said then that it would need to reduce its budget by 25%, to about $26 million. The Nelson-Atkins did not immediately respond to a request for comment today.

"I give the museum all kinds of the benefit of the doubt," Davis said in the interview. "I genuinely understand the dilemma the museum is facing. But I don't know if this is the right way to handle it. I disagree with this decision [about Aspinwall]."

Davis's departure was first reported by the art critic and podcast host Tyler Green.

Before arriving at the Nelson-Atkins after the gift of the Hallmark Photographic Collection, Davis had enlarged the trove from a total of 650 works by 35 artists to 6,500 works by about 900 photographers, travelling across the country for Hallmark to acquire groundbreaking works. Today it includes over 15,000 images.

Davis became chief curator of photography at the Nelson-Atkins in 2009 and has curated around 100 exhibitions and authored 30 catalogues and books, including 22 about the Hallmark Photographic Collection.

Aspinwall held the title of curator and collections supervisor when her job was eliminated. Among the many exhibitions she has curated are Golden Prospects: California Gold Rush Daguerreotypes and the travelling shows Photographic Wonders: American Daguerreotypes from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and Celebrating Picasso: Photographs by David Douglas Duncan, and she has authored several photography books.

The museum managed to delay job cuts last spring after securing a $3m Payroll Protection Program loan from the federal government to cover salary costs. It also negotiated with long-time donors to reallocate funds that were previously restricted to other purposes. "However, those steps-while important and helpful-were not enough to cover the lost revenue," the Nelson-Atkins said last month.

In a statement, Richard C. Green, chairman of the museum's board of trustees, said then that it viewed job cuts as "the last resort". But "unfortunately, we are not immune to the same forces that businesses and other nonprofit organisations have faced during this difficult year," he said. "These steps are being taken to ensure the museum's long-term sustainability."

The Hall Family Foundation issued a statement thanking Davis for his stewardship "and the unique role he has played in guiding the foundation's purchases of photography and curation of this collection that he has loved so much". The statement quoted the director and chief executive of the Nelson-Atkins, Julián Zugazagoitia, as saying, "Keith should feel tremendous pride for the legacy he has helped to build."

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Keith Davis, senior curator at Nelson-Atkins, resigns to protest colleague's layoff

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A widely recognised senior curator of photography at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri has resigned to protest the elimination of a fellow photography curator's job amid staff cuts. The top curator, Keith F. Davis, told museum world colleagues in an email that he had "spent 10 intense days" arguing for the retention of Jane L.

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Future of Teen Council and Programming in question..

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Future of Teen Council and Programming in question..

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No in person programming is planned for the foreseeable future and the Teen Council seems uncertain how to engage the community and seems directionless.

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The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art has inspired young minds in the Kansas City area with community teen activities year round. But with COVID-19, the museum had to close its doors to the public Mar. 13.The Nelson and it's programs have attempted to keep in contact with the community, but have struggled in doing so. Elie Roddy is a part of the Teen Council at the Nelson, so her summer was impacted by the changes, and tells about what her summer has looked like since the outbreak.

"Previously, I attended biweekly meetings at the museum, but since the COVID-19 outbreak, we have met a few times over Zoom to discuss the future of teen programs," Roddy said.

The Teen Council works year-round at the Nelson and oversees all the teen programs including teen workshops and the teen guide summer program. Typically, the teen programs provide events and jobs that allow teens to fill their summer such as teen tour guides and Nelson summer camp counselors. Unfortunately with this summer, these plans had to come to a halt.

"The Teen Program hasn't done anything big to keep teens engaged, but the museum as a whole has put out virtual tours on YouTube," Roddy said.

This spring and summer was going to be big for the Teen Council too. This summer was going to have open mic nights, a formal ball, and Shuttlerock, a Battle of the Bands concert to support local bands in Kansas City.

"This winter, we also held a large, masquerade themed ball that was very popular. We had over 700 attendants, and were very proud," Roddy said. "We had another dance and other fun events planned for the spring, but all of it was cancelled due to the pandemic... Not only are these events major for the Teen Council, but they also hold a place for memories and talents to be shared amongst teens... Open Mics, were a once-a-month event we did to create space for creative expression and acceptance for teens who often feel silenced... it's been really hard to not be at the museum, especially in the summer. Our teen community has been a wonderful safe space for me, and I've missed that a lot." Roddy said.

The Teen Council faces a lot of uncertainty too. With these big summer plans being cancelled the Teen Council was left unsure of how to engage with the community, and with each other too.

"I miss all my Teen Guide pals and all the wacky kids that we have given tours. We still don't know if there will be any Teen Programs for this school year, or if there will even be a council," Roddy said.

Brent Bellew, is Elie Roddy's manager for the Teen Programs. He oversees their New Dimensions teen workshops, the museum's Teen Council, and the Teen Guide summer program.

"It's certainly been different," Bellew said. "When we first left in mid-March, the assumption, like many had at the time, was that we'd be back in the office within a few weeks... For me specifically, it's been difficult because so much of my job normally involves actively running programs in-person." Bellew said.

The programs held at the Nelson have found it hard to stay in touch with the community. Normally, the Teen Council's programs are physical and in-person events, and what makes it special is the atmosphere that comes with being at the museum.

"We have our social media platforms, but they're limited in how much they can do. For instance, a lot of programs focus on interactions between event attendees, such as our Open Mic Nights," Bellew said. Since these events are very in-person based, the connection to other teens just isn't the same virtually.

But, luckily these programs don't plan to stop.

"We have some new ideas that we're working on, but it's all experimental right now because this is uncharted territory for us," Bellew said. "We spent a long time focusing on in-person interaction, so we're trying to create these new virtual opportunities for our community to stay in touch with the museum and our Teen Council."

Christian Alldredge works under Brent Bellew and aside Elie Roddy as a part of the Teen Guides program. Additionally, Christian frequents Teen Council activities that include the Open Mic Nights. There, he performs his original music, and cheers on his peers as they perform too.

"I was at the Nelson at least one night a month for their Teen Council events, namely the Open Mic Nights, in which I would debut new music to a really warm, inviting, and accepting crowd of talented musicians, poets, and other performance artists." Christian says.

Christian's involvement in the Teen Guides program began in the summer of 2019, he and other teens that were a part of this program worked every day over the summer giving tours around Nelson. These tours were for kids who attended the many summer camps held at the Nelson.

"Teen Guides is a summer job, in which we're giving tours of the Nelson's sculpture garden, and tours of the Anita B. Gorman Discovery Center Grounds. The Discovery Center has partnered with the Nelson's Teen Guide program for many years," Alldredge says.

With the Teen Council programs being shut down, Christian reminisces about the activities and events that he and many others were going to attend this summer. He talks fondly of these activities and events saying,

" I miss many of Teen Guide opportunities, which would've included things like giving tours of the Sculpture Garden on the Nelson's lawn, working events like the Shuttlerock Battle of the Bands, and enriching kids summers through education and intersection of art and nature, which is what the Teen Guide Program strives to do." Alldredge remarks. He plans on attending Teen Council program events, and hopefully being employed through the Teen Council program as soon as it is up and running again which is soon to be determined.

In preparation to reopen on Sep. 12, the Museum has created a "Frequently Asked Questions" page on their website, nelson-atkins.org. This page covers their new policies such as the museum remains free, but timed tickets are mandatory to ensure social distancing requirements. Masks are also required in the museum and hand sanitizer stations have been placed all over the Nelson as well. Additionally, the museum has a frequent cleaning of all surfaces and spaces. With all this preparation the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art is ready to re-open their doors and continue to inspire the creative minds of Kansas City.

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Finding Inspiration At The Nelson During COVID-19

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The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art has inspired young minds in the Kansas City area with community teen activities year round. But with COVID-19, the museum had to close its doors to the public Mar. 13.The Nelson and it's programs have attempted to keep in contact with the community, but have struggled in doing so.

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Oct 23rd KC Art and Culture blog calls out the N-A for not protecting jobs and cites a deep problem of not prioritizing staff at the risk of threatening their own reputation. 

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Oct 23rd KC Art and Culture blog calls out the N-A for not protecting jobs and cites a deep problem of not prioritizing staff at the risk of threatening their own reputation. 

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The decision to layoff was made by the Board of Trustees without input from staff and they were surprised by the announcement which was made over Zoom. The blog asked about deaccessioning to raise funds to keep staff, and the Nelson-Atkins responded that while prohibitions regarding using deaccessioning funds, the museum thinks it's a "short term solution to a longer term problem" and wants to fix the long term. The blog goes on to note that the N-A was doing just fine, even better than fine fiscally before the pandemic and that most staff had been working four day weeks since the lockdown. The blog spoke to an employee who was not affected by the layoffs who said that morale had been very low at the museum for some time. The blog goes on to say that the N-A had been "buying out" curators as a cost reduction measure and that those position have never been replaced which can seriously affect programming going forward.

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Kansas City's Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art announced they are reducing their budget by 25% to around $26 million. In turn, this necessitated a staff reduction of 15%, or 36 positions, across the entire Museum.

The announcement came from Director Julián Zugazagoitia during a museum-wide Zoom meeting.

In an announcement found on the Museum's website, "Any decision to reduce the size of the staff must be the last resort. The staff members of the Nelson-Atkins keep our institution's mission thriving, and they ensure that the Museum is a cultural treasure in Kansas City," said Richard C. Green, Chair of the Nelson-Atkins Board of Trustees. "Unfortunately, we are not immune to the same forces that businesses and other nonprofit organizations have faced during this difficult year. These steps are being taken to ensure the Museum's long-term sustainability."

Amidst this crisis, institutions worldwide are rethinking their strategies beyond only staying open and attracting visitors. The Nelson-Atkins is no different in that regard. What must be taken into account is their legacy in the community. Reconsidering their exhibition and programming with relevant curatorial thinking that attracts discourse should be imperative.
Doing so requires the Museum to get back on track financially and ensure the right exhibition, curatorial, and support staff are on hand to make that work. The idea of selling work, of which the Museum is presumed to have quantities, both in-house and in storage, should be considered.

William Rudolph, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, replied to Informality via email when asked about the possibility of deaccessioning work. He says,

"All museums hold works of art in trust for the public and all museums-and the Nelson-Atkins is no exception-maintain policies about deaccessioning works from our collections that follow the principle that the proceeds from any deaccessioning campaign are restricted to the acquisition of works of art. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Association of Art Museum Directors, the professional organization to which we belong, has temporarily relaxed its prohibitions about the use of deaccessioning funds. Indeed some museums have made the painful decision to initiate deaccessioning to have available monies for operations. We, however, believe that it is a short-term solution to a longer-term problem and that our collections must be maintained as a trust for the benefit of our visitors."

The Museum has been closed to visitors since March 14 due to COVID-19 and reopened to the public on September 12. With every safety precaution available in place, attendance remains painfully low. To further reduce costs, exhibitions have been postponed until 2021. Relying on six revenue streams, including event rentals, fundraisers, ticketing, the Museum's Rozzelle Court Restaurant, parking fees, merchandise sales, the Museum also worked with long-time donors to reallocate previously restricted funds. Additionally, a Payroll Protection Loan was secured.

However, the institution has not been able to make up ground. Speaking anonymously with someone close to the situation, they told Informality up until the pandemic; the Museum had an excellent fiscal year with a rise in pledges, which is why they could continue until now. For the most part, employees were grateful for their position and to have a steady workflow, even while working under the possibility of termination.

Since COVID, there was an across the board pay cut, reducing staff to a four-day workweek. Leadership took a pay cut of 10% and 20% for both Director Zugazagoitia and COO Karen Christiansen.

Although some employees weren't as upset about the news, friends and relatives told Informality the mood after the announcement is one of shock, dismay, and sadness.

Another former employee not affected by the staff reductions also spoke on the condition of anonymity. They noted, "Things have been bad at the Museum for a while. Never experienced morale as low as it has been for these past few years."

This person, and by no means the only one to feel this way, tell Informality morale lows started several years ago when the Museum began buying out several curators as cost-savings measures. This decision would question the Museum's direction and how lasting decisions on exhibition ideas and presentations are being made. Further to this, no new people were hired in their place. Although finances are a top concern at the Museum at this moment, the problem of so few curators over the long-term can be observed as an issue when trying to draw in visitors with innovative exhibitions and programming.

This summer's fiasco with local police using the Museum as a staging ground during the Black Lives Matter protests in Kansas City has also damaged the Museum's credibility with the Black community. It took Director Zugazagoitia seventy-two hours to make a public response, leaving enough time for people to form opinions about the Museum's role in the city.

The Museum must make innovative and lasting decisions soon. Among such choices are to consider how the Museum is being perceived outside the "family-friendly" bubble that seldom allows for creative curation and scholarship. Curatorial and educational activities cannot just safely skim current events happening outside their door. They must use their resources to go beyond its role as an encyclopedic institution, and that may include deaccessioning. It is the last resort, but one that should be taken seriously. The trust of donors is essential but does not hold up against the staff's survival that runs this institution daily.

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Staff Reductions at Nelson-Atkins Spotlights Need for Restructuring of Exhibitions and Programming

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Kansas City's Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art announced they are reducing their budget by 25% to around $26 million. In turn, this necessitated a staff reduction of 15%, or 36 positions, across the entire Museum. The announcement came from Director Julián Zugazagoitia during a museum-wide Zoom meeting.

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Petition from current and past N-A employees for better working conditions and transparency. 

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Petition from current and past N-A employees for better working conditions and transparency. 

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While this doesn't specifically say this is a petition to unionize, it has the language of collective bargaining and cites their rights to organize to address working conditions.

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Nelson-Atkins Workers Deserve Respect and Dignity

Julián Zugazagoitia (Director), Karen Christiansen (COO), the Strategic Leadership Group (SLG), and the Nelson-Atkins Board of Trustees,

The workers of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art believe that the values of transparency, equity, and accountability are key in creating a community-centered institution that is aligned with the museum's mission.

Every day, every worker in every department ensures that the Nelson-Atkins provides a space for the power of art to engage the spirit of the community. While we do our best to create a safe environment for visitors to engage with our collection, we are placed in an unstable, unsafe position by a lack of equity and transparency in decision-making. This was made devastatingly clear by the sudden announcement of a reduction in force, when 36 of our fellow workers found their positions terminated without warning in the midst of a global pandemic.

Click below for KC Studio coverage of the petition.
Nelson-Atkins Lays Off 36 Employees Prompting Pushback

Staff are exercising our right to work together to petition our employer, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, for better working conditions through these demands. It is illegal for The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, or any employer, to retaliate against us for signing or distributing such a petition on non-work time. You can read more about our rights from the National Labor Relations Board here.

To: Julián Zugazagoitia (Director), Karen Christiansen (COO), the Strategic Leadership Group (SLG), and the Nelson-Atkins Board of Trustees,
From: [Your Name]

We call on you to make a commitment to trust and respect the staff of the Nelson-Atkins through the following steps:

* Prioritize safety for staff, with a path to personal, physical, and financial safety in the face of the Coronavirus pandemic, by ensuring that no further lay-offs are made through Fiscal Year 2021.

* Be transparent in decision-making, give staff a seat at the table and a voice in budgeting decisions that impact our future and our museum.

* Outline the concrete actions the museum has taken and provide a timetable for future actions that further our systemic commitment to Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Sustainability (IDEAS), going beyond public statements, and taking into account staff feedback collected in the summer of 2020.

Staff are exercising our right to work together to petition our employer, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, for better working conditions through these demands. It is illegal for The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, or any employer, to retaliate against us for signing or distributing such a petition on non-work time.

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Nelson-Atkins Workers Deserve Respect and Dignity

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The workers of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art believe that the values of transparency, equity, and accountability are key in creating a community-centered institution that is aligned with the museum's mission. Every day, every worker in every department ensures that the Nelson-Atkins provides a space for the power of art to engage the spirit of the community.

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August 18 Nelson-Atkins announces they will reopen Sept 12. 

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August 18 Nelson-Atkins announces they will reopen Sept 12. 

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The museum is limiting the number of entrances being used, and changed days and hours of operation to do deep cleanings. Masking is requires and is specifically to be over the nose and mouth. The museum offers disposable masks for sale for 2$ each, or "if medically unable to wear a cloth mask" the coat check has a limited number of sanitized face shields to loan out. General entrance continues to be free, but timed ticketing is required to control numbers of visitors. Hand sanitizer is available throughout the museum. The museum cafe reopens also, but changes its style of service to a more traditional restaurant service to avoid bottlenecking around food stations.

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OCT 21 The museum announces budget reduction of 25% to 26 million and layoffs of 15%. 

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OCT 21 The museum announces budget reduction of 25% to 26 million and layoffs of 15%. 

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The museum issued a statement on their website about the 36 layoffs citing a serious decrease in revenues with six months of closure and the cancellation of all events and classes and a reduction in attendance numbers. The museum did apply for and receive a Payroll Protection loan, but that it was not sufficient to their needs and has been exhausted.

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The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art this week took measures to reduce the size of its staff, the result of the debilitating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Nelson-Atkins closed to visitors and all but essential staff on March 14 and reopened on September 12. During that six-month period, the museum lost revenue from event rentals, fundraisers, ticketing, the Rozzelle Court Restaurant, parking fees, and sale of merchandise. Although the museum is now open, attendance is dramatically lower, thus generating less income. At the same time, because of the uncertainty caused by the pandemic, the museum has been forced to cancel all traveling exhibitions, in-person tours, classes, public programs and festivals-steps that also affect revenue generation and fundraising. As a result, the Nelson-Atkins will need to reduce its budget by 25%, to about $26 million. Those reductions, in turn, necessitate staff reductions by 15%, or 36 positions.

"Any decision to reduce the size of the staff must be the last resort. The staff members of the Nelson-Atkins keep our institution's mission thriving, and they ensure that the museum is a cultural treasure in Kansas City," said Richard C. Green, Chair of the Nelson-Atkins Board of Trustees. "Unfortunately, we are not immune to the same forces that businesses and other nonprofit organizations have faced during this difficult year. These steps are being taken to ensure the museum's long-term sustainability."

The museum depends on private donations, and supporters have continued to be generous. The museum was successful in securing a Payroll Protection Program loan, and has also worked with long-time donors to reallocate funds that were previously restricted. However, those steps-while important and helpful-were not enough to cover the lost revenue caused by the pandemic-related closure.

"The museum's mission, to bring art and people together, will prevail," said Julián Zugazagoitia, Menefee D. and Mary Louise Blackwell CEO & Director of the Nelson-Atkins. "Any decision that adversely affects staff is always the most difficult. But while our staff will be smaller and our resources more limited, we are fully committed to providing transformative experiences with the extraordinary art collection that defines this museum."
For media interested in receiving further information, please contact:
Kathleen Leighton, Manager, Media Relations and Video Production
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
816.751.1321
kleighton@nelson-atkins.org

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Nelson-Atkins Statement Regarding Reduction in Force

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The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art this week took measures to reduce the size of its staff, the result of the debilitating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Nelson-Atkins closed to visitors and all but essential staff on March 14 and reopened on September 12.

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The Museum is open to the public again at this point, but big festivals that draw crowds continue to be held virtually.

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Día de los Muertos Festival: Welcoming Remarks

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Many short tutorials in clay and painting are posted to the museum Youtube channel. These seems to stop after about a month, but videos on American sign language and culture continue.

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Kansas City's annual Big Picnic on the museum grounds does not happen. The sculpture garden is still open to the public.

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June 17th: Virtual Juneteenth celebration at the Nelson-Atkins 

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June 17th: Virtual Juneteenth celebration at the Nelson-Atkins 

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This festival features new performances and lectures and appears to be more like a live (and new) event.

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April 19 Passport to India:First Virtual Festival

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April 19 Passport to India:First Virtual Festival

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The Nelson-Atkins holds a variety of cultural festivals throughout the year. Passport to India is the first to be held virtually, and comprises videos and performances from the 2019 festival and is held as a same day "live" event on the website. Passport to India along with the Chinese Lunar New Year and Dia de los Muertos are huge attendance draws.

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June 3rd Nelson-Atkins issues a statement in support of BLM on their Facebook page and on the website. 

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June 3rd Nelson-Atkins issues a statement in support of BLM on their Facebook page and on the website. 

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The statement on the website remains up and speaks about learning from the black community and mistakes made "in the long journey to become an anti-racist institution, and we apologize." The statement seems too little too late and remarks made on museum Facebook page reflect that.

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The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art stands with Black Lives Matter. We stand against police brutality, institutionalized racism, and systemic discrimination that targets Black Americans.

The Black community has taught us. We have made mistakes in our long journey to become an anti-racist institution, and we apologize. We have much more to learn. We are joining your call for immediate and lasting justice.

We are listening to Black community partners, to leaders in the faith, civic, and art communities, and to our staff members. The Nelson-Atkins would not be where we are without the cherished voices of Black community members. We thank you, and we will step up to support and celebrate you. We commit to doing better for you.

We are working every day to become an institution that is stronger, braver, and committed to the ideals of empathy, equity, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility. We stand with you now, and we will stand with you tomorrow.

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The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art stands with Black Lives Matter. We stand against police brutality, institutionalized racism, and systemic discrimination that targets Black Americans. The Black community has taught us. We have made mistakes in our long journey to become an anti-racist institution, and we apologize. We have much more to learn.

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 May 16: Kansas City Zoo penguins visit the Nelson-Atkins

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 May 16: Kansas City Zoo penguins visit the Nelson-Atkins

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. - You're not the only one bored at home. The Kansas City Zoo has been closed since March 17. Their neighbors at the Nelson-Atkins Museum have been closed for just about as long. So zoo trainers decided to bring some guests over for an art field trip!

Three little penguins pattered around the gallery, stopping to take in the exhibit. The museum shared a video of the visit on their Facebook.

The caption says "quarantine has caused everyone to go a little stir crazy, even the residents of the Kansas City Zoo. So several of the penguins decided to go on a field trip to the Nelson-Atkins, which is still closed, to get a little culture."

You can hear the museum's director and CEO joking about speaking in Spanish because their visitors were Peruvian penguins.

The Kansas City Zoo is set to reopen today with some restrictions. The Nelson-Atkins Museum is still closed. It's asking for donations to its recovery funds ahead of Museum Appreciation Day on Monday, May 18.
What other people are reading right now:

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. - You're not the only one bored at home. The Kansas City Zoo has been closed since March 17. Their neighbors at the Nelson-Atkins Museum have been closed for just about as long. So zoo trainers decided to bring some guests over for an art field trip!

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KCUR 89.3 - NPR in Kansas City. Local news, entertainment and podcasts.

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In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the U.S. government set out to evaluate the riskiness of mortgages - and left behind a stunning portrait of the racism and discrimination that has shaped American housing policy.

Now a new digital tool makes it easier than ever to see that history in high-resolution.

The project features the infamous redlining maps from the Home Owners' Loan Corporation. In the late 1930s, the HOLC "graded" neighborhoods into four categories, based in large part on their racial makeup. Neighborhoods with minority occupants were marked in red - hence "redlining - and considered high-risk for mortgage lenders.

Redlining was carried out in cities big and small, with the help of local realtors and appraisers. The maps and descriptions eventually made it into the National Archives.

A newly revamped interactive site from "Mapping Inequality" takes scores of HOLC maps - previously accessible only in person at the Archives or in scanned images posted piecemeal online - and embeds them on a single map of the USA. Selecting a city reveals the old map images; zooming in shows a color overlay over a modern map with street names and building outlines.

Mapping Inequality / Screenshot by NPR

A team of scholars at four universities took seven months to build the project. More than 150 cities are included in the map, which was released last week to replace a version with fewer features. A key element of the new map is that many neighborhoods include the reason they were classified the way they were.

If you see that a neighborhood was redlined, ranked as "desirable" or fell somewhere in the middle, just click and you can find out why. "Infiltration of: Negroes" is a common fill-in-the-blank item explaining why a region was deemed hazardous.

"Respectable people but homes are too near negro area," reads a summary for a B-grade neighborhood in Richmond, Va.

"This is considered the most exclusive, or swank, section in Springfield," says the entry for one of the city's two A-classified neighborhoods. "The area is high restricted" - meaning it enforces strict rules barring non-white people from buying houses there.

Robert Nelson, director of the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond, co-designed the map. He says one entry in particular stands out for him as shocking: a spot in Camden, N.J., where a D-graded neighborhood abuts an A-grade, an unusual situation.

"It is 100% poor class Negroes practically all on relief," the "clarifying remarks" for the redlined neighborhood read. "A high wall, however, prevents their spread."

Another neighborhood in Camden, mostly occupied by Polish professionals, was graded "declining," one step above a redlined neighborhood. "Negro district on edge of section," the description reads, "but splendid cooperation of all residents in this section will always prevent spread."

Redlining followed what Nelson, crediting his colleague for the term, calls the "one-house rule" - like the "one-drop rule" for racial identity. Under the "one-drop rule" in the 19th and early 20th century, a single drop of African-American "blood" made a person black, even if their heritage was overwhelmingly white. Similarly, on redlining maps, a single black household in a middle-class area could make the whole neighborhood "risky" for mortgage loans in the eyes of the federal government.

As a result of redlining, families of color "couldn't avail themselves of what is arguably the most significant route to family and personal wealth-building in the 20th century, which is homeownership," Nelson said.

Redlining is frequently cited by scholars examining American inequality, and it was highlighted by Ta-Nehisi Coates in his "Case for Reparations" in The Atlantic.

" Neighborhoods where black people lived were rated "D" and were usually considered ineligible for FHA backing," he wrote. "Black people were viewed as a contagion. Redlining went beyond FHA-backed loans and spread to the entire mortgage industry, which was already rife with racism, excluding black people from most legitimate means of obtaining a mortgage."

Without access to FHA-insured mortgages, he writes, black families who sought homeownership were forced to turn to predatory and abusive lenders.

Coates focused on redlining in Chicago, but - as is immediately obvious on the Mapping Inequality site - redlining was carried out across the country.

Nelson says he hopes the new tool will prompt some conversations and soul-searching among the general public. "People don't know about this history and I really wanted for them to wrestle with, grapple with, talk about, think about the racial and wealth inequalities in 20th-century America - and particularly the federal government's role in creating that," he says.

The next step is to start crowd-sourcing the transcription of the files - so that anyone can help turn the scanned (and sometimes hard-to-read) images into searchable text. A team is currently working on building a feature to make that possible.

Nelson said he could hire grad students to do that work, but he'd much rather see everyday citizens contribute for their own city, learning about their region's past as they type up the old descriptions.

"What I hope people get out of that is that they experience what I experience," he says. "I've been looking at these things forever, but every once in a while, I stumble upon something startling and it changes the way I think about American cities and inequality."

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Interactive Redlining Map Zooms In On America's History Of Discrimination

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In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the U.S. government set out to evaluate the riskiness of mortgages - and left behind a stunning portrait of the racism and discrimination that has shaped American housing policy. Now a new digital tool makes it easier than ever to see that history in high-resolution.

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“It’s not enough to issue these toothless statements,” tweeted Adrianne Russell, a writer, museums specialist and former employee at the Nelson-Atkins, “and that’s why I wish museums would just be quiet unless they’re going to tell the truth.”

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Museums are called out for weak response to BLM

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Museums are called out for weak response to BLM

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Cultural institutions are feeling compelled to stand up for racial justice, but artists and activists want action, not just statements of solidarity.

Water bottles inside the lobby of the Public Theater in New York, which opened to offer refreshment and the use of bathrooms to people protesting the death of George Floyd in police custody. Credit... Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

The apologies keep coming.

After the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., allowed the police to use its property to stage a response to a protest over George Floyd's death, its director asked the police to gather elsewhere and issued a public apology.

When the Getty was criticized for putting out "vague" social media posts calling "for equity and fairness" that failed to mention Mr. Floyd, who died in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25, its chief executive pledged to do better.

The language of contrition was similar from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art after it was criticized for responding to Mr. Floyd's death with an Instagram post: an image of a work by the artist Glenn Ligon - who is black - without any statement from the institution.

"We can do better," the apology said. The museum followed up with a second apology days later for having disabled comments in response to criticism of its initial post.

For decades, cultural organizations have generally opted out of politically heated debates, positioning themselves as neutral territory and preferring to let the artists they present do the opining. As civic institutions often supported by taxpayer dollars, they have historically eschewed political allegiances.

But this time is different.

In the period of protests, many arts organizations have entered the fray. Some of their public messages have been commended as better than silence; others criticized as tone deaf and too little too late.

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The Alpha Omega Theatrical Dance Company in New York posted signs showing support for Black Lives Matter and racial justice efforts. Credit... Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

Such efforts to meaningfully contribute to the conversation are especially sensitive because many of the institutions are led by white executives who answer to boards largely made up of wealthy white trustees. That composition has long fueled suspicion that arts organizations are inherently resistant to - or incapable of - real change.

"It's not enough to issue these toothless statements," tweeted Adrianne Russell, a writer, museums specialist and former employee at the Nelson-Atkins, "and that's why I wish museums would just be quiet unless they're going to tell the truth."

When the Metropolitan Opera tweeted last week that there was "no place for racism in the arts," several people commented on social media that the company had never performed an opera by a black composer. (Their first - Terence Blanchard's "Fire Shut Up in My Bones" - was announced last year but has yet to be performed.)

"I do not think art museums have done enough," Chris Anagnos, the executive director of the Association of Art Museum Directors, said in a statement on the organization's website. "We have dabbled around the edges of the work, but in our place of privilege we will never live up to the statement that 'museums are for everyone' unless we begin to confront, examine and dismantle the various structures that brought us to this point."

Some responses have landed more successfully than others, namely the impassioned statement from Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian, who called on his professional cohort to step up.

"Will we join the struggle to seek justice and equality?" Mr. Bunch said. "Will we heed the call of courageous figures throughout history who spoke out against slavery, marched on for voting rights, and sat in for basic equality? Will we challenge the nation to live up to its founding ideals? In the memory of those taken from us and for the good of the country, I hope that we do."

Other institutions tried a pragmatic approach. In New York, Off Broadway and Brooklyn theaters, as well as the Brooklyn Museum and MoMA PS1, have offered restroom access to protesters. Theaters in cities such as Oakland, Calif.; Austin, Texas; and Washington, have done the same. The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture created an online portal for a discussion about race.

The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis announced it would no longer contract the services of the local police department for events until the law enforcement agency "implements meaningful change by demilitarizing training programs, holding officers accountable for the use of excessive force and treating communities of color with dignity and respect." Four Minneapolis officers were charged in connection with Mr. Floyd's death.

Many organizations that view themselves as enlightened, progressive institutions decided they could no longer sit on the sidelines in order to avoid controversy.

"We are part of that problem - the racism is within us - as institutions that are always telling our audience what's good art and making choices that set up or reinforce cultural orders," said Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "We have an ability to critique and change those orders."

The conversation about the complacency of arts groups was building long before their recent public statements of solidarity or their posting of black boxes and #BlackoutTuesday on Instagram were judged insufficient.

The Whitney Museum of American Art faced criticism when it featured in its 2017 Biennial exhibition a painting by the white artist Dana Schutz of the lynched black teenager Emmett Till, incurring protests. It kept the painting on the wall, saying it raised important questions.

Last year, the museum was the site of multiple demonstrations because one of its trustees, Warren B. Kanders, owns a company that sold the tear gas that was reportedly used on immigrants at the border. He ultimately felt compelled to step down.

Four of the 14 curators now are people of color, and the museum has featured black artists in earnest but acknowledges there is much more to do. "Everybody has to look at themselves and say, 'We're all not doing this as well as we should be,'" said Adam D. Weinberg, the museum's director. "If you don't have input from other voices, you're just going to get the same answers."

Many of these cultural organizations did not respond at all when Amadou Diallo was shot dead by the police in the Bronx in 1999 or Michael Brown was killed by an officer in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. But this time around, the approach has changed, whether it's because the politics of the moment have triggered advocacy or because the multiple fatal encounters with the police can no longer be ignored.

"They're using language that they've never used before in terms of racism and white supremacy," Melanie A. Adams, the director of the Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum, said of museums. She has workedas a facilitator of workshops on topics related to museums and race.

Ms. Adams said that she had noticed a shift in museum attitudes after the shooting of Mr. Brown and believes some of the change may be attributable to more young activists working in institutions. The challenge, she said, will be sustaining the discussion that currently feels so urgent. "Sometimes with these situations, for the next few months we'll all wave the social justice flag, and then we'll go back to our corners," she said, "I'm hoping that's not going to be what happens this time."

Some efforts have been more symbolic. Last Tuesday, the Kennedy Center announced that its lights would be dimmed for nine nights in honor of Mr. Floyd, marking the final nine minutes of his life.

The Hirshhorn Museum has organized a number of major institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art to devote the home pages of their websites to a 24-hour stream of "Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death," a 2016 video by the artist Arthur Jafa, on Saturday.

"No institutional leader has all the answers right now," said Max Hollein, the director of the Met. "There is a moment when you reflect, when you have to listen."

Mr. Hollein learned this lesson the hard way last week when Mr. Ligon objected to the use of one of his artworks in the Met's recent social media post. "I know it's #nationalreachouttoblackfolksweek but could y'all just stop," Mr. Ligon said on Instagram. "Or ask me first?"

Mr. Hollein said he has apologized directly to Mr. Ligon.

Through June 9,the Museum of Modern Art is presentingscreenings of Mr. Jafa's 2018 "akingdoncomethas," which focuses on more than 100 minutes of black church services. The museum has also posted a list of organizations that fight racism and support equality.

"We can change the stories we tell in the galleries and we have to do the work to make sure the institution reflects the richness and diversity of our country," said Glenn D. Lowry, MoMA's director. "This is a moment of reckoning."

Many arts leaders agree that the most effective response is institutional change - hiring more staff members of color; diversifying the board; presenting a range of programming.

"We need to revisit deeply everything - our organizational structures, the programs that we value, what exhibitions we should be doing," said Julián Zugazagoitia, the director of the Nelson-Atkins who used to head El Museo del Barrio. "The actions speak more than declaratory statements."

At the same time, change can cost money and some of the institutions pledging to diversify both their staffs and the moneyed boards that support their work are already facing severe financial problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Laura Raicovich, the politically outspoken former director of the Queens Museum, is currently working on a book due out next year, tentatively titled "The Myth of Museums: Why Cultural Institutions Can't Be Neutral in an Age of Protest."

In 2018, she stepped down after clashing with her board over an event sponsored by the Israeli government and over what, she believed, was her public support for young undocumented immigrants.

She said that museums should abandon the pretense of a united front. "It's time for institutions to drop the monolithic responses," she said, "to be more transparent about the different conversations happening inside of a museum."

James Cuno, the president of the Getty Trust, said he was comfortable with having had to revise his museum's statement in response to criticism. "It was extremely important that our staff brought it to our attention," he said. "It was the way institutions should work."

The Guggenheim Museum, which did not have a black curator on staff until last year, has for several months been working with an outside diversity consultant, its director, Richard Armstrong, said. Its statement of support for Blackout Tuesday drew criticism from Chaédria LaBouvier, who organized the Guggenheim's Basquiat show last year as a guest curator. She has said her experience at the museum was fraught with racism. Among the examples she cited was her exclusion from a museum panel that discussed the exhibition she designed.

Mr. Armstrong, speaking broadly in an interview, said that the museum should strive to be an ethical leader but that there invariably would be missteps.

"One of the missing links in our moving forward as a culture is a greater sense of forgiveness. We've made mistakes, we've tried as much as possible to address them and we will go on making mistakes."

But some people in the art world are growing tired of what they view as excuses. After the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art apologized for blocking from view a critical comment from a former employee named Taylor Brandon, who is black, two artists, Leila Weefur and Elena Gross, along with the artists' collective Heavy Breathing and others, decided to pull their work from a residency program. They wanted to send a clear message that the museum needs to address its institutional racism rather than just release statements of solidarity.

"It is their job to figure out how to resolve this problem," Weefur said. "Do not put the labor solely on the artist."

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Floyd Case Forces Arts Groups to Enter the Fray

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Cultural institutions are feeling compelled to stand up for racial justice, but artists and activists want action, not just statements of solidarity. The apologies keep coming. After the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., allowed the police to use its property to stage a response to a protest over George Floyd's death, its director asked the police to gather elsewhere and issued a public apology.

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May 29th  Museum security approves KCPD patrol use of parking lots and grounds, the police use the museum as a staging ground against BLM protests in the neighborhood in the wake  of the murder of Floyd George. The Nelson-Atkins is on the edge of an historic "redline", which were used by real estate developers and neighborhood covenants to keep minority residents from moving beyond specific areas of the city. A historically black neighborhood created by redlining is just a couple of blocks away where the protests were being held. KC redlining was especially bad and the effects are felt up to the present day and there is public outcry against the museum and its slow response. 

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May 29th  Museum security approves KCPD patrol use of parking lots and grounds, the police use the museum as a staging ground against BLM protests in the neighborhood in the wake  of the murder of Floyd George. The Nelson-Atkins is on the edge of an historic "redline", which were used by real estate developers and neighborhood covenants to keep minority residents from moving beyond specific areas of the city. A historically black neighborhood created by redlining is just a couple of blocks away where the protests were being held. KC redlining was especially bad and the effects are felt up to the present day and there is public outcry against the museum and its slow response. 

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The Nelson-Atkins Museum, a private art institution in Kansas City, came under scrutiny on social media for allowing patrol units to organize on its property last Friday, May 29. The units were stationed during a nearby protest, one of many worldwide condemning police violence following the death of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of white former officer Derek Chauvin.

Following a weekend of mounting pressure on the museum to address the police presence, director Julián Zugazagoitia issued a statement this afternoon explaining that Nelson-Atkins's onsite security staff had granted the patrol unit permission to station there.

"The museum's security approved this request from the KCMO Police Department on Friday, and this was not unusual, given the spirit of our long history of cooperation," wrote Zugazagoitia in the statement. "When I was made aware of this on Saturday, I was in touch with police to ask them to relocate, which they did on Saturday and Sunday."

@nelson_atkins the sight of police being allowed to stage at your museum is not something I'll ever forgive or forget.

- mars (@_infrareal_) May 31, 2020

Before the statement was released, activists and artists continued to question the museum for its days-long silence.

"Why are you allowing police to stage on your property?" asked one commenter on the museum's Instagram page on Sunday. "Why have you been silent about the brutality against Black people and against peaceful protesters? Silence is violence."

In his response, Zugazagoitia expressed regret over the hurt and confusion caused by the incident as well as solidarity for the pain caused by the murder of George Floyd.

The reactions to the statement have been mixed, with some thanking the museum for its acknowledgment and others deeming it insufficient. "You even reinforce what we know, you will continue to side with the oppressor because of your long history of cooperation with them," said Alex Martínez, an organizer for the ACLU in Kansas, in a comment. "The fact that it took you days to release a statement speaks loudly."

In an interview with Hyperallergic, Zugazagoitia said the museum has been closed since March 14 because of the coronavirus pandemic, and its security team made a quick decision on the spot.

Responding to the museum's lag in issuing a statement, he said, "The reality is we're not operating under normal circumstances. I wish I could have been quicker with my statement. We don't have the tools that we normally have."

The rapidly-circulating images of the patrol vehicles dredged up longstanding and deep-seated concerns over art's complicity in the prison industrial complex and state-sponsored violence. Photographs of Safariland-branded tear gas canisters strewn across protest sites in the last few weeks have once again prompted references to Warren Kanders, the company's CEO who was forced to resign from the Whitney Museum board in 2019 after months of protests.

Another Kansas City institution, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, was singled out for what some deemed a tone-deaf expression of support yesterday. Commenters on the Instagram post pointed out the museum's ties to UMB Bank, which sued the state of Rhode Island in an attempt to keep an ICE detention center open.

Kansas City is only a four-hour drive from Ferguson, the city in St. Louis County where white former police officer Darren Wilson murdered Michael Brown, a Black teenager, in 2014. The fatal confrontation and ensuing protests galvanized the incipient #BlackLivesMatter movement, with local chapters sprouting in diverse communities across the nation.

The Kansas City Police Department confirmed to Hyperallergic that a patrol unit had set up a "command post area" on the Nelson-Atkins parking lot on Friday in response to protests at a nearby plaza, but could not provide an exact timestamp for the unit's arrival and departure. An anonymous witness told Hyperallergic that they noticed the vehicles were no longer at the museum on the weekend.

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Nelson-Atkins Museum Allowed Police to Station on Premises, Sparking Outcry

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The Nelson-Atkins Museum, a private art institution in Kansas City, came under scrutiny on social media for allowing patrol units to organize on its property last Friday, May 29. The units were stationed during a nearby protest, one of many worldwide condemning police violence following the death of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of white former officer Derek Chauvin.

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March 13th, the museum closes in "solidarity" with the city and plans reopen April 3rd.  The museum will be closed until September 12th. 

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March 13th, the museum closes in "solidarity" with the city and plans reopen April 3rd.  The museum will be closed until September 12th. 

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Kansas City, MO. March 13, 2020- The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art stands in solidarity with the city and the nation in response to the coronavirus, and will close effective Saturday, March 14 through Friday, April 3. During that time, the museum will halt all events and public access to the museum.

"We recognize that during challenging times, art can be a source of inspiration, comfort, and human expression," said Julián Zugazagoitia, Menefee D. and Mary Louise Blackwell CEO & Director of the Nelson-Atkins. "The Nelson-Atkins will continue to be that source, and we encourage our guests to visit online for information and updates."

The museum will reassess the situation after the three-week mark. Please check www.nelson-atkins.org for updates.
Photo credit: Beth Byers
For media interested in receiving further information, please contact:

Kathleen Leighton, Manager, Media Relations and Video Production

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

816.751.1321

kleighton@nelson-atkins.org

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Nelson-Atkins Closes for Three Weeks in Response to Coronavirus | Nelson Atkins

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Visitors Encouraged to Visit Online Kansas City, MO. March 13, 2020- The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art stands in solidarity with the city and the nation in response to the coronavirus, and will close effective Saturday, March 14 through Friday, April 3. During that time, the museum will halt all events and public access to the ...