Cosmos in Kansas City - Front Page - work by Walter De Maria at Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art - Brief Article

Art in America, Feb, 2003 by Alice Thorson

In October, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City unveiled a major permanent installation by Walter De Maria. Titled One Sun, 34 Moons, the work was designed in collaboration with architect Steven Hell, who is heading up a $140-million expansion and renovation of the museum scheduled for completion in 2006.

The art work is sited on the museum's north side, in a shallow reflecting pool designed by Hell. Inset into the bottom of the pool are 34 circular glass lenses that allow light into the new underground parking garage below. To make the 34 "moons," De Maria placed white fluorescent lights around each of the lenses. The "sun" part of the installation is a 33-by-40-foot bronze-and-steel slab featuring a textured surface coated with gold leaf. It is positioned just above the water line near the center of the pool. The rectangular slab is slightly curved, measuring 17 inches thick at the center and tapering to 10 inches on the sides. De Maria envisions it as the top of a 500-foot-diameter disk that continues below ground. It is similar in conception to his 1977 piece Vertical Earth Kilometer, a brass rod inserted 1,000 meters into the ground in Kassel, Germany.

Commissioned with funds from the Kansas City-based Hall Family Foundation, One Sun, 34 Moons joins works by Henry Moore, Claes Oldenburg, Magdalena Abakanowicz and others on the museum's grounds, known as the Kansas City Sculpture Park.