The Kansas City Star Sculpture

PROJECT TYPE:  Sculpture
MATERIALS: Stainless Steel, Clear Coat with tints of color. Each block will have its own unique color. Mirrored polished Chrome finish with UV protection. The block colors are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK) which is the color technology still used today. The support pillars for each block is fabricated from poly-carbonate and steel. The benches around the sculpture are made from a clear acrylic.

YEAR PRODUCED:  2019

UNIQUE FEATURES: The Cubes represent printing blocks. Old printing presses required letters to be placed individually in blocks. There were cabinets that held the letters in “upper cases” for the large letters and “lower cases” for the small letters.

The blocks are open, so you can see through them and each block will frame a unique view of Kansas City.

INSTALLATION LOCATION:  1729 Grand Blvd, Kansas City, MO 64108

ARCHITECT:  Hollis + Miller
3D DEVELOPMENT: JE Dunn Construction

 


INSPIRATION:
 The sculpture represents the Kansas City Star from its conception to today and into the future. The Kansas City Star opened its printing blocks on September 18th, 1880 by William Rockhill Nelson, which then was called, “The Kansas City Evening Star”. Many famous people worked with the Kansas City Star including President Harry S. Truman in 1902 and Ernest Hemingway from October 1917 to April 1918. After the Nelson family died, the Nelson’s $6 million was donated to create the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The newspaper lived on through the employees purchasing the newspaper. The Kansas City Star has won 8 Pulitzer Prizes and won the annual Scripps Howard Foundation Award in 2017.

These blocks, and the way they capture scenes of the Kansas City Sky Line, highlight the intuitiveness of the Kansas City Star and how it became a staple figure in Kansas City.

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