Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum to reopen Sept. 12

View of the Nelson-Atkins Museum’s original 1933 building and the ‘Shuttlecocks’ installation from the south side. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, closed since March 14 due to COVID-19, will reopen to the general public on Saturday, Sept. 12.

Admission is still free, but timed tickets will be required to promote social distancing and limit the number of guests in the museum and individual galleries at any one time.

“We have been anxiously awaiting the day when we can safely open our doors to visitors,” said Julián Zugazagoitia, CEO and director of the Nelson-Atkins. “The new experience will feel a bit different to those accustomed to visiting the museum before the pandemic. But the encounters with art will continue to be powerful, engaging, and transcending.”

Members and museum volunteers are invited to enjoy members-only days in advance of the public opening to provide feedback on new safety protocols that have been put in place. The public is invited beginning Sept. 12. All are asked to reserved free timed tickets on the museum website, www.nelson-atkins.org.

The museum will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday through Monday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday, and closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. During the week, special hours will be set aside for members: 10 to 11 a.m. Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays.

Admission will be free, but guests who are asked to consider a small donation to help cover the museum’s significant costs regarding the pandemic: $3, $8, $15, $20, or any amount will help the Nelson-Atkins.

“This beloved institution will withstand the setback of this pandemic, and our generous donors are working hard to sustain it into the future,” Zugazagoitia said, “Each donation, whatever the amount, helps underscore the importance of art and expression during these difficult times.”

Despite the cancellation of large featured exhibitions, there will be plenty to experience at the Nelson-Atkins. The popular exhibition “Gordon Parks x Muhammad Ali: The Image of a Champion, 1966/1970” has been extended through April 4, 2021, and features 55 photographs Parks took of Ali while on assignment for Life magazine. The traveling retrospective “Robert Blackburn & Modern American Printmaking” celebrates Blackburn as a key figure in the development of printmaking in the 20th century. And “Perfectly Imperfect: Cranach, Dürer and the Renaissance Nude” compares and contrasts the female nudes of the two most important artists of the German Renaissance. This is the museum’s first exhibition featuring German Renaissance paintings in 60 years.