A New York City firm known for integrating architecture, art, infrastructure, and landscape will reimagine Kansas City’s premier museum for the next generation of visitors.
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Director and CEO Julián Zugazagoitia announced Thursday the Weiss/Manfredi architecture firm was selected to design a new wing on the west end of their campus.
“It captured the spirit of the museum while offering a bold vision for our future,” said Julián Zugazagoitia, director and CEO of the Nelson-Atkins.
“Central to our competition was the need to respect the Nelson-Atkins’ original, neoclassical building, as well as our beautiful Bloch building, while also bringing something new to our campus,” he said. “This concept delivers all of that.”
The firm was one of six finalists for the museum’s new expansion. The addition is intended to create extra gallery, programming, and visitor spaces, and will highlight specific indoor and outdoor spaces.
Wiess/Manfredi’s notable projects include Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park, the Women’s Memorial at Arlington Cemetery, Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center, and the reimagining of Longwood Gardens, Pennsylvania.
“We’ve been thrilled to actually get to know the museum over 10 years ago when we worked on the cultural master plan for the city,” partner and co-founder Marion Weiss said, referring to a 2014 concept that created an arts route linking the museum with neighboring institutions like Kansas City Art Institute, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and other arts communities. The Nelson-Atkins commissioned the firm to study how to improve pedestrian connections while working within the city’s car-centric layout.
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“What really became clear is that the museum and the sculpture park were the bellybutton of the cultural home for the entire city,” Weiss said.
The firm’s new proposal, “A Connected Tapestry,” would recenter the museum’s campus around the 22-acre sculpture park, with expanded spaces for education, performance, events and dining.
It would include strategic renovations and luminous additions to reinvigorate the museum, “signaling a new transparency both literal and philosophical,” according to the proposal.
“It started with saying: ‘What can we think about that is so special about this place in a way to transform it and celebrate it?’” partner and co-founder Michael Manfredi said.
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“It gave us a chance to think about this project quietly, and by that I mean without superficial affectations. Because there’s an extraordinary collection, there are a series of great buildings — the original building’s great, the Bloch edition is great — but there’s also a magical landscape, this great lawn that is so unique to this building,” Manfredi said.
Zugazagoitia said the firm’s dynamic design ideas aligned with the institution’s vision to become “a museum for all.”
“It was palpable that there was an understanding both of the transparency, the circulation that we wanted, the recentering back of giving a lot of noblesse to our 1930s building that somehow was decentered,” Zugazagoitia said. “This dialog that now brings the whole campus into a more balanced equilibrium.”
The estimated construction budget of $160 million will be funded entirely by private donations, museum officials have said. That financial campaign is expected to be the single biggest investment in Kansas City arts in recent years.
Evelyn Craft Belger, who sits on the museum’s Board of Trustees and serves on its Architecture Selection Committee, said creativity and approach was a part of what made Weiss/Manfredi perfect for this new project.
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“This process has been thorough and illuminating,” Belger said in a statement. “The committee was energized with the array of dynamic designs submitted, and I want to thank all of the participating architects, and especially our five other finalists, for their creative engagement with us throughout this process.”
“In the coming months, we look forward to working closely with Weiss/Manfredi to refine their ideas and ensure alignment with our own goals and plans,” she said.
Weiss/Manfredi was chosen after the museum mounted a global competition in October 2024. Finalists included Kengo Kuma & Associates, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Selldorf Architects, Studio Gang and WHY Architecture.
As part of the selection process, a free exhibit of all the concept designs went on display at the Nelson-Atkins and online in March. The public was invited to share their views.
There is currently no timeline for construction. Now that the winning design has been chosen, the firm will spend one year finalizing plans with the selection committee, while the capital campaign to raise money for the project continues.
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The Bloch Building, the museum’s last expansion 18 years ago, was designed by New York architect Steven Holl, who won a design competition that started in 1999. That expansion cost $95 million, according to the Architectuul website. The same year, Time magazine called the structure on the east side of the museum’s campus “haunting and luminous.”
Weis/Manfredi’s current work includes the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, India, the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, and revitalizing the western side of New York City’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The firm has been recognized with the 2024 Louis I. Kahn Award, the 2020 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal, the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices award and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Architecture.
“For us, this is really just an incredible privilege to be invited to actually work with the museum, work with the community, and to everybody who calls the Kansas City Art Museum their home,” Weiss said. “We feel honored.”
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is a financial supporter of KCUR. Our journalism is editorially independent of funders.
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