Timeline

Her trustees are A. W. Childs and Herbert V. Jones. They realize her funds are not enough to realize her wishes.​ Mary McAfee Atkins was born in 1836 in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.​ NAMA Archives​

He does not leave funds for a building. His wife and daughter are his trustees.​ William Merritt Chase (American, 1849–1916), William Rockhill Nelson, 1907, oil on canvas, 60 x 50 1/8 in. (152.4 x 127.32 cm), Gift of William Rockhill Nelson, 34-316​

The family lawyer, Frank F. Rozzelle (b. 1857), dies in 1923, and he also leaves money for the upkeep of a museum. NAMA Archives, MSS 21​

Ida Houston Nelson (1853–1921) was William Rockhill Nelson’s wife. She left approximately $850,000 (the residue of her estate) to be used for an art gallery. NAMA Archives, DR2-P00805​

A year later, her husband Irwin Kirkwood also dies, leaving the family’s mansion, Oak Hall, and $250,000 for the use of the gallery. Archives, RG70

William Rockhill Nelson makes his daughter Laura Nelson Kirkwood and his wife Ida Houston Nelson his trustees. His will stipulated that after their deaths, his trust be maintained by three trustees appointed by the area’s three universities. Laura Nelson Kirkwood (1883–1926). NAMA Archives, DR2-P00806

Photograph of William Volker. NAMA Archives RG70-B2, Ephemera Collection

Photograph of Herbert V. Jones. Jones was trustee for both Mary Atkins’s trust and William Rockhill Nelson’s trust, and he facilitated the joining of the two for the purpose of one museum. NAMA Archives RG70_B1, Ephemera Collection

Photograph of J. C. Nichols. American art dealer Edith Gregor Halpert remembers meeting the trustees in 1933: “Then one day this little character [Harold Woodbury Parsons] came in with three of the biggest men I ever saw [the three trustees]. They all wore big hats like cowboys, ten gallon hats, big burly guys, very impatient, saying, ‘All right! Let’s see your art!'” (Oral history interview with Edith Gregor Halpert, 1962–1963. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.) NAMA Archives, RG 70, Ephemera Collection

In 1928, Nelson’s former home, Oak Hall, is razed (according to Laura Nelson Kirkwood’s wishes) to make way for the museum. NAMA Archives ARV20120088

Complete steel frame of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, January 6, 1931. NAMA Archives, RG 70, Ephemera Collection

The construction crew on February 3, 1931. Photo from NAMA Archives, RG 70, Ephemera Collection

Jean-François Millet, Waiting, ca. 1853–1861, purchased in May 1930

“The Beginning of the Collection of Old Masters in These Ten Paintings Bought for William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art,” Kansas City Star, April 20, 1930, 1E. The painting by Théodore Rousseau, Cows Descending the Hills at Sunset, is at lower center.

Théodore Rousseau, Cows Descending the Hills at Sunset, ca. 1837–1840. purchased April 24, 1930

“A Big Addition to Art: All Agree The New Nelson Group is a Notable One,” Kansas City Star, May 20, 1930, 17. Jean-François Millet’s Waiting is at upper right.

Nicolas Poussin, The Triumph of Bacchus, 1635–1636. Parsons called it a kingpin of the museum’s growing collection.

Telegram from Parsons to the Nelson-Atkins urging the Trustees to buy the Poussin. NAMA Archives, RG80-05, B04

Harold Woodbury Parsons (1882–1967) worked as the art advisor to the museum’s trustees from 1930 to 1952, securing purchases such as Nicolas Poussin’s The Triumph of Bacchus. NAMA Archives, RG70, IIB11

The painting was sent on approval to the museum in 1931, but local dealer Effie Seachrest (1869–1952) had to convince the Trustees to purchase it by collecting 130+ signatures on a petition. “Petition to purchase Van Gogh Olive Orchards,” ca. April 21, 1931, NAMA Archives, William Rockhill Nelson Trust Office Records (RG 80/05).

Daniel MacMorris, Portrait of Effie Seachrest, 1942. Reproduced in Daniel MacMorris and Jeanne R. Simpson, 60 Years: MacMorris (Mission, KS: Jeanne R. Simpson Gallery of Fine Art, 1974), 37

Vincent van Gogh, Olive Trees, June/September 1889. A clause in Nelson’s will prevented the Trustees from purchasing works from any artist not dead for at least thirty years. Because van Gogh died in 1890, this painting was one of the few modern works available for acquisition by purchase.

Queuing for art. Kansas City Times, December 17, 1933. NAMA Archives, RG72, vol. 2, p. 126

“Gallery and Museum Comprise a Temple of Art Revealing Treasures of 50 Centuries,” Kansas City Star, December 10, 1933, C1. NAMA Archives, Scrapbook Collection, RG 72, v. 2

The exhibition One Hundred Years of French Painting, 1820–1920 features the Toulouse-Lautrec painting, which would be purchased by Henry and Marion Bloch more than 40 years later. In 1935, Jane Avril Looking at a Proof by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was lent to the Kansas City exhibition by Wildenstein & Co., New York

Portrait of James Roth. NAMA Archives, MS 001, Series IV, Box 15

James Roth (1910–1990) began work at the museum in 1933 as a security guard, but he also assisted the museum’s contract restorer, Marcel Jules Rougeron (French, 1875–1954) for several years. After studying at the Fogg Art Museum’s Department of Conservation and Technical Research at Harvard University in the summer of 1938, he returned to the museum to establish the conservation department. He retired in 1973. James Roth, 1957, photograph. NAMA Archives, RG 70, B01, Ephemera Collection

Paul Cezanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from Les Lauves, 1904–1905. Purchased from Wildenstein & Co., New York, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1938

Installation photo of The Collection of Josef Stransky at the Worcester Art Museum, ca. 1932–1933. Paul Gauguin’s Faaturuma (Melancholic), 1891, is pictured in the middle. NAMA purchased the painting from the Stransky estate through Wildenstein & Co., New York, in 1938

Collector Robert Lehman donates several paintings and majolica pieces in 1945 in appreciation of the Nelson-Atkins storing his seventeen paintings during the war. One of his gifts is John Hoppner’s Portrait of Emily St. Clare as a Bacchante, 1806–1807

Letter dated December 26, 1941, from the French Consulate to NAMA after the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco, 1939-1940

From 1940 to 1945, private collectors and museums send more than 150 works of art to the Nelson-Atkins for safekeeping during World War II. “Evacuee Art Finds a War Haven Here,” Kansas City Star, September 15, 1940, 1D

Ethlyne Jackson, seated in center, surrounded by museum staff, including Lindsay Hughes (directly behind Jackson), who served as Acting Curator of Oriental Art. Standing left to right: Harold Woodbury Parsons, Lindsay Hughes, Frances Webb (Assistant in Junior Education department); (seated left to right): Mary Louise Clifton (head of Junior Education), Ethlyne Jackson, Louise Lebrecht (Assistant to Jackson), November 1944. Mary Louise Clifton Womer Papers, MSS 008, NAMA Archives

Ethlyne Jackson (1906–1993) becomes Acting Director when director Paul Gardner goes to World War II. Jackson had been Gardner’s executive secretary since the museum’s opening and also served as curator of the decorative arts collection. She initiated a series of Wednesday evening lectures on nineteenth- and twentieth-century French painting. Mary Louise Clifton Womer Papers, MSS 008, NAMA Archives.

One of three Impressionist paintings owned by William Rockhill Nelson and given by the Laura Nelson Kirkwood Residuary Trust to the Nelson-Atkins: Camille Pissarro, Poplars, Sunset at Eragny, 1894

William Rockhill Nelson died in 1915, leaving most of his estate to Kansas City to purchase works of art. Nelson’s wife, Ida Nelson, died in 1921 and his daughter Laura died in 1926, but her residuary trust was not dispersed for eighteen more years. NAMA Archives RG70.

Patrick Kelleher served as curator from 1954 to 1959. NAMA Archives, RG 43/02, Friends of Art Records

Students of the Kansas City Arts Institute petitioned for the purchase of Water Lilies, despite its large size. NAMA Archives

The painting was reunited with the other two panels in the exhibition Monet’s Water Lilies Triptych, photographed at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, April 6–June 15, 1979

In 2011, the triptych was once again reunited. Photo of the exhibition Monet’s Water Lilies at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, April 9–August 7, 2011

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, ca. 1915-1926

In 1977, the European curatorial department was broken up into three sections, with Coe serving as curator of nineteenth-century painting. He also became director of the museum but maintained his curatorial role until he left in 1982. NAMA Archives

J. Alaterre, Garden of Les Mathurins at Pontoise, 1962, composite photograph, NAMA Archives, Department of European Art, RG 03, Box 03, Pissarro Article folder

Camille Pissarro, Garden of Les Mathurins at Pontoise, at its debut at the Nelson-Atkins in 1960. Reproduced in “Nelson Gallery Benefits from Donors’ Generosity,” Kansas City Star, May 8, 1960

Camille Pissarro, The Garden of Les Mathurins at Pontoise, 1876. Purchased from Rosenberg and Stiebel, New York, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, May 6, 1960

Fund-donor Helen Foresman Spencer and Director Laurence Sickman with Odilon Redon’s Vase of Flowers, at the opening of the Spencer Impressionist Gallery, February 22, 1976.
She also helped purchase Edgar Degas’s Rehearsal of the Ballet in 1973. NAMA Archives, RG45, B01​

Director Laurence Sickman, fund-donor Helen Foresman Spencer, and curator Ted Coe with Claude Monet’s Boulevard des Capucines in 1972.​ Coe was nephew-in-law to Foresman Spencer. NAMA Archives, RG70_B02​​

“Many, many years ago, my wife and I built a house, and we thought we should have some art in it. . . . I saw a little Renoir. I said, ‘That’s very pretty!’ And we bought it.” —Henry Bloch, on In Situ: Impressions from the Bloch Galleries, aired on KCPT on June 7, 2017. Portrait of Henry and Marion Bloch, November 2006, in Kansas City, MO. Photo by Mark McDonald

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Study for “Young Girls Playing Volant”, ca. 1887. The Blochs’ purchase would launch what would become one of the last great collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting to be held in private hands in the United States

Although the Nelson-Atkins was given its first painting by a French female artist in 1934 (Marie Laurencin’s The Boat, 1930), it later deaccessioned this work. It was not until 1979 that the Museum purchased its first work by another French female artist, Berthe Morisot’s Daydreaming (1877)

After a “Chardin” purchased in 1932 turned out to be a copy of another painting, the museum found a beautiful painting firmly attributed to the artist: Still Life with Cat and Fish

Installation in the European painting gallery showing Claude Joseph Vernet’s Coastal Harbor with a Pyramid: Evening on the far right and Seaport with Antique Ruins: Morning on the left of the large portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud, spring 1994. NAMA Archives

Attributed to Sébastien Bourdon, The Adoration of the Magi, ca. 1639

Kansas City Star reporter Donald Hoffman wrote: “The portrait represents the first time the Nelson Gallery has chosen to buy an Old Master painting by a woman.” Donald Hoffmann, “A New Old Master at the Nelson: Portrait Artist Made her Mark in French Court,” Kansas City Star, November 16, 1986

Roger Ward was curator of European Painting and Sculpture from 1982 to 2001. He inventoried the collection, identified works that could be sold, and used the funds to acquire pieces previously unrepresented. He is pictured here with the pendant pair by Jean-Baptiste Pater that he acquired in 1982. NAMA Archives, Visual Resources Slide Collection, R01​

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun’s Portrait of Marie Gabrielle de Gramont, Comtesse de Caderousse, 1784, is considered one of the artist’s masterpieces.
Photo of the painting in NAMA galleries, April 1, 2006, by Bruce Matthews​

Most of Gustave Caillebotte’s paintings were in private hands for many years. In 1989, it was still rare for a museum to buy his work. Gustave Caillebotte, Portrait of Richard Gallo, 1881

The Met’s painting illustrates Labille-Guiard at work in her studio. Self-Portrait of the artist with Two Pupils, 1785, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Julia A. Berwind, 1953​

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Portrait of Joachim Lebreton, 1795, is as an example from an important female neoclassical painter

Public Opening of the Bloch Building, June 10, 2007 at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Photo by Mark Delich​

Manet to Matisse features the Blochs’ collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. The Bloch family attending An Asymmetrical Evening, June 2, 2007 at NAMA. Photo by Mark McDonald

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan became Senior Curator and director of the project in 2016. Photo by Mark McDonald

The first project assistant for the catalogue, Meghan Gray, began work in 2008. In 2016, she became the manager of the project. Photo by Tiffany Matson

The project began in 2008 under the direction of Simon Kelly (center), associate curator of European Paintings and Sculpture (2005–2010), with conservator Mary Schafer (left) as a key partner. Nicole Myers (right) directed the project as associate curator from 2010 to 2016. Photo by Mark McDonald

Léon-Augustin Lhermitte, Potato Planting in Spring,​ 1888 is a gift from James W. Sight and Dr. Heidi Harman in honor of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Nelson-Atkins

The Marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundation also gave $12 million to renovate a portion of the European galleries in the original Nelson-Atkins building to accommodate their gift of art. Robert L. Bloch, Henry Bloch, and Thomas Bloch tour the construction zone for the new Bloch Galleries, Nelson-Atkins, 2015

Henry Bloch, left, presents his collection of twenty-nine Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings for accessioning to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, June 2015. Photo by Matt Pearson

A ballerina with Edgar Degas’s pastel, Dancer Making Points at the opening of the Bloch Galleries, February 25, 2017. Photo by Mark McDonald

The opening of the Bloch Galleries for Friends of Art and Society of Fellows, February 25, 2017. Photo by Mark McDonald​

Henry Bloch (seated, center) with his family at the opening of the Bloch Galleries, February 23, 2017. Photo by Mark McDonald

Émile Bernard, The Artist’s Grandmother, 1887​