Go Chiefs!

Neptune wears a football jersey in a fountain on the Country Club Plaza, Kansas City, Missouri.

A statue of Neptune wears the uniform jersey shirt of a Kansas City football team member in honor of the team’s advancement to a playoff game.

The Neptune fountain sculpture sits in the Country Club Plaza Shopping Center in Kansas City, Missouri. The sculpture depicts Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, holding a trident. Neptune sits in a chariot pulled by sea horses. Water gushes from the horses’ nostrils. This cast lead sculpture was built by the Bromsgrove Guild of Worcestershire, England in 1911.

Miller Nichols purchased the 8,000-pound cast lead fountain for its weight in scrap metal. It was found on the top of a train car full of scrap metal at a salvage company. Nichols transported the rescued sculpture from Great Britain to Kansas City, where it was refurbished and installed on the Plaza in 1953.

Miller Nichols was the son of J. C. Nichols, who established the Country Club Plaza shopping Center in 1922. The Plaza was designed architecturally after Seville, Spain. The Plaza was the first shopping center in the world designed to accommodate shoppers arriving by automobile.

Kansas City, Missouri, is known as “The City of Fountains.” There are 200 officially registered fountains in the metropolitan Greater Kansas City area. That number excludes the many fountains at corporation and sub-division entrances, office atriums, private gardens and homes.

One of the messages flashing on a Kansas City bus is “Go Chiefs!”as it drives through the Country Club Plaza Shopping Center in Kansas City, Missouri.

UPDATED: New Photo Added

Pomona Statue Wearing Dee Ford’s Kansas City Chief’s jersey on a fountain at a restaurant in one of the courtyards of the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri.

Royal Blue Fountains

Royal Blue Water Fountain Cherub.

The Kansas City Royals are in the baseball World Series for the second year in a row! The city is celebrating once again with blue water fountains.

Kansas City is known as the City of Fountains. Kansas City has more fountains than any city in the world except Rome, Italy which has more than 2,000 fountains.List of Kansas City’s fountains.

The Royals play the New York Mets in the 2015 Baseball World Series.
Who are the Kansas City Royals and the New York Mets?

J.C. Nichols Fountain in Blue, Kansas City Country Club Plaza.

Kansas City Union Station in Blue

Untion Station in Blue, Fountains, Kansas City, Missouri

Meyer Circle Mermaid Fountain, Kansas City, Missouri.

Nelson Mandela

This sculpture of Nelson Mandela is in Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, which is on the eastern slopes of Cape Town’s Table Mountain in South Africa. Mandela is considered a national treasure and is featured in art and sculpture throughout South Africa. Kirstenbosch, established in 1913, was the first botanic garden in the world to be devoted to a country’s indigenous flora.

Nelson Mandela is celebrated in sculpture and art throughout South Africa, where he is known as the “Father of the Nation.” I photographed a few pieces of this art on a recent trip.  

Mandela was President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, the first to be elected in a fully representative, multiracial election.

This print of Nelson Mandela was for sale in an art gallery in Camps Bay, South Africa. Sorry abut the glare.

Internationally acclaimed for his anti-colonial and anti-apartheid stance, Mandela has received more than 250 awards, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.  A political activist against apartheid,  Mandela was imprisoned for twenty-seven years, including eighteen years on Robben Island, which is just off of the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront of Cape Town. Boat trips from the Nelson Mandela Gateway on the waterfront take visitors to the prison on Robben Island, which is now a museum.

About Nelson Mandela.

About Robben Island.

The Apartheid Museum.

Nobel Square in the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town, South Africa, features statues of South Africa’s four Nobel Peace Prize winners – Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela (shown left to right here.)

Here’s a popular photo stop at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town, which features statues in Nobel Square of South Africa’s four Nobel Peace Prize winners – Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela. I’m not sure what the red sculpture is behind the Nobel statues. I think it has something to do with Olympic Medals that South Africa won in 2012. Does anyone know? I saw photos of the red sculpture under construction from 2010, so it’s relatively new. In the distance is the iconic Table Mountain.

From Signal Hill, you can see Robben Island near the horizon, in Table Bay off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for eighteen years on Robben Island.

A sculpture of Nelson Mandela dominates the square named after him in Sandton City, an upscale shopping center in Johannesburg, South Africa.

A sculpture of Nelson Mandela is a backdrop to a newscast in Nelson Mandela Square. The square anchors Sandton City, a popular upscale shopping center in Johannesburg, South Africa.

This blue cow advertises the Peacemakers Museum, which celebrates the Nobel Peace Laureates but in particular South Africa’s Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela. The museum is in Nelson Mandela Square, Johannesburg. http://www.peacemakersmuseum.co.za/

This sculpture of Nelson Mandela, created from tens of thousands of tiny beads, is popular with tourists traveling through the Johannesburg, South Africa airport. There are often lines as people wait their turn to get their photos taken. Bead sculpture in all sizes is a popular art form in South Africa.

Where in the Museum is Roy?

The Museum Guard "Roy,' a Duane Hanson sculpture, looks wistfully out a fake window in an 18th century re-created English room in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. Roy has been on duty at the museum since 2007.

My daughter and I visited the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art on a mission to find “The Museum Guard” sculpture in his current assignment. My daughter thought “Roy” might be in the English rooms on the first floor, but we decided to visit every room of the museum on our hunt before making the English rooms our last stop. Of course, to see the exhibits and art properly you’d be there for days…

My daughter’s instincts were right. Roy was in one of the last rooms on our speed-viewing list, “The King’s Lynn Room,” an 18th century Georgian drawing room, originally from King’s Lynn, Norfolk, England. “Roy” is the nickname the Museum staff have named this old friend.

Roy has spent most of his time in the Museum’s Bloch Building, which opened in 2007, but recently has been assigned to different galleries. Click here to read my post about one of Roy's recent assignments and about Duane Hanson, his creator.

Pardon Me, Ma’am, But Don’t Touch Me, I’m The Art

Duane Hanson's sculpture "The Museum Guard" has been temporarily reassigned to a new post in "The Hooper Room" in the Early American Art Galleries of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.

I was disappointed today when I thought that one of my favorite art pieces was apparently “on vacation.”  Duane Hanson’s “Museum Guard” at the Nelson-Atkins Museum is like an old friend, and I wanted to say hello, but he’d been turned out of his old gallery to make room for a temporary exhibition.   I laughed when I discovered him in a new location in an Early American room. Good for him! We all need a little shake-up in our routines and locales.

A sign in his new, temporary location says:
Why is that museum guard standing in The Hooper Room?
Duane Hanson’s realist sculpture, Museum Guard, has stood faithfully at his post in Gallery L3 since the Bloch Building opened in 2007. Now that two of the contemporary galleries have been emptied to make room for the exhibition “To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America,” he requested assignment elsewhere in the museum.
“Since my arrival at the Nelson-Atkins on November 18, 1976, I’ve heard only praise for the museum. Now, I have the good fortune to see what everyone has been talking about. For the next two months, I will be in this beautiful historic American home!” he said. “Then, I will be reassigned to Gallery P24, where I will experience the elegance of 18th-century English life in the King’s Lynn Room.”

Before moving to the new Bloch building, “Museum Guard” was stationed very near to his current temporary location in the main building, which was once home to the museum’s contemporary collection before undergoing remodeling to become the Early American Art gallery.  Duane Hanson, an American artist, was born in 1925 and died in 1996. He created “Museum Guard” in 1975 out of polyester, fiberglass, oil and vinyl. To read more about Hanson click on Duane Hanson.  Some of Hanson’s realist sculptures can be seen at The Saatchi Gallery.

Duane Hanson's "Museum Guard" in his usual spot in the Bloch Building of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. Life imitates art as a real museum guard stands to the right. People can't resist getting their photos taken next to the vinyl Museum Guard. I hope Museum Guard will eventually return here, but now that he's had a taste of freedom, he may be hard to track down.

Duane Hanson's "Museum Guard" is one of the most popular art pieces in the museum. He always draws a crowd.

Sign explaining Duane Hanson's "Museum Guard's" new assignment.

Full Moon

The full moon hung like a huge ornament over the Christmas lights of the Country Club Plaza shopping center in Kansas City on Saturday. When we rounded the curve of Ward Parkway in our car, the sight was breathtaking. At a red light on a bridge over Brush Creek, I jumped out and snapped a couple of shots. I knew they were blurry, but we'd stopped traffic so I couldn't get any more. A woman, who had walked onto the bridge, was also photographing the scene. "Isn't it crazy beautiful!" she exclaimed. I agreed. Next year, I'll set up a tripod and take a proper photograph. This year, you have to pretend it's a painting by Claude Monet.

The full moon adorned the glowing Bloch Building on Saturday. You can see the moon in the center between the trees. Actually, this photo was taken one day after the moon was full, but it's still an impressive sight (much more so in person, really!) On Friday night, the moon appeared 14 percent bigger in our sky, because it was at its closest point to Earth this year. It was also 30 percent brighter than some other full moons during the year, according to space.com. The moon makes a trip around Earth every 29.5 days, but the orbit isn't a perfect circle. On Friday night, the moon was 221,560 miles (356,567 km) away. The average distance is 238,855 miles (384,400 km).

You can't see the moon here, but the Bloch Building creates its own glow. The Bloch, a new addition to the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, houses contemporary art.

Moonlight illuminates the sky above the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City on Saturday. One of the Nelson's four giant shuttlecock sculptures, by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, looks as if it just landed on the front lawn. There are four shuttlecock sculptures among the many sculptures in the Nelson's sculpture garden, including a dozen monumental bronzes by Henry Moore and a cast of The Thinker by Auguste Rodin.