K.C. museum building labyrinth

KANSAS CITY, Mo -- The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art has begun installing a triangular walk-in glass labyrinth that's scheduled to open to the public in May.

The work, called Glass Labyrinth, is by Kansas City native Robert Morris and weighs more than 400 tons. It's made up of dozens of 7-foot-high, 1-inch-thick glass panels that will form a 50-by-50-by-50-foot glass triangle with a maze of interior glass walls, The Kansas City Star reported. Crews began installing sections Tuesday at the museum's outdoor Donald J. Hall Sculpture Park.

The work is scheduled to be open to the public May 22 during a celebration inaugurating a yearlong series of activities marking the Sculpture Park's 25th anniversary.

Other Morris works have included labyrinths over the years, from an 8-foot-high, gray-painted, wood version he created at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia in 1974 to a chain-link labyrinth in the courtyard of Sonnabend Gallery in New York.

"Within the 'labyrinth' a paradox is allowed: We lose ourselves to find ourselves," Morris has said in a statement.

Morris, born in Kansas City in 1931, is widely known for his use of industrial materials. Before moving to New York in 1959, Morris took art classes at the Nelson-Atkins and at the Kansas City Art Institute. He earned a master's in art history from Hunter College.

In 1992, another of his works, Bull Wall, a pair of 120-foot-long steel walls with cutouts of bulls, was installed at the American Royal.

Jan Schall, the Nelson-Atkins' curator of modern art, said the Morris labyrinth is a "true labyrinth," with one way in and the same way out.

"His interest in the labyrinth is about a sense of confinement and creating a bit of anxiety," she said.

The Nelson commissioned the Glass Labyrinth with funding from the Hall Family Foundation. Unlike a temporary Morris labyrinth in Brazil, the Nelson version will be permanent, which meant months of planning and testing for Steve Waterman, the museum's director of presentation.

"It looks like a big line floating up in the air," Waterman said. "It's quite powerful."

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Information from: The Kansas City Star, http://www.kcstar.com