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‘NOW ART COMES’: THE PARTHENON AND RACIAL CONQUEST IN KANSAS CITY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 October 2024
Abstract
The Charles Keck reliefs on the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO, portray the triumph of white settlers over Native Americans, who are depicted as stereotypically aggressive and ‘barbaric’. Keck's sculptures invite comparison to the metopes of the Parthenon, which depict the triumph of Greek and Athenian ‘civilization’ over ‘barbarism’. The central focus of Keck's reliefs is Fortitude, an allegorical figure whose image throughout art history is indebted to depictions of Athena and Minerva, and who serves for the Nelson-Atkins as a modern American proxy for the Athenian goddess. As the Periclean building programme proclaimed Athenian superiority and had long-term cultural and economic impacts for Athens, the Nelson-Atkins is intimately connected to the economic and urban development of Kansas City, including its history of racist real estate practices, engineered by a founding trustee of the museum, which became a national model.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Footnotes
My sincere thanks to the anonymous reviewer, who made many very helpful suggestions.
References
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12 Quoted in Mallouchou-Tufano (n. 11), 53.
13 For overviews, see Mallouchou-Tufano (n. 11) and F. Mallouchou-Tufano, ‘The Parthenon from Cyriacus of Ancona to Frédéric Boissonas: Description, Research and Depiction’, in P. Tournikiotis (ed.), The Parthenon and its Impact in Modern Times (Athens, 1994), 164–99. On the links between classical archaeology and the Acropolis to nationalism and ‘western’ conceptions of Greek antiquity, see Y. Hamilakis, The Nation and its Ruins. Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece (Oxford, 2007), 8–20, 214–24, 231–2, 253–5; D. Plantzos, ‘Archaeology and Hellenic Identity, 1896–2004: The Frustrated Vision’, in D. Damaskos and D. Plantzos (eds.), A Singular Antiquity. Archaeology and Hellenic Identity in Twentieth-Century Greece (Athens, 2008), 14–21. For the ‘cleansing’ of the Acropolis of post-classical layers in light of modern Greek identity, see R. Greenberg and Y. Hamilakis, Archaeology, Nation, and Race. Confronting the Past, Decolonizing the Future in Greece and Israel (Cambridge, 2022), 93–8.
14 Mallouchou-Tufano (n. 13), 164.
15 Wight worked for McKim, Mead & White during the construction of the McKim Building of the Boston Public Library. Shortly before construction ended (1895), McKim invited Wight to the New York offices. Wight went to the American Academy in Rome sometime after that, but returned in time to serve as a drafter for the J. P. Morgan Library, for which construction began in 1902. So Wight must have visited the Parthenon sometime between 1895 and 1902. See R. B. Fowler, ‘A Dream Put into a Drawing was Thomas Wight's Turning Point’, The Kansas City Star, 26 April 1931, C6; <https://www.themorgan.org/architecture>, accessed 2 June 2023; <https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/online/bookmans-paradise/who-built-the-bookmans-paradise>, accessed 2 June 2023; <https://www.bpl.org/mckim-points-of-interest/>, accessed 2 June 2023. Keck travelled to Greece during his time at the American Academy in Rome, from 1900–1905. Charles Keck papers, c.1905–c.1954, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Box 1, Folder 4, ‘Speech to the National Sculptors Society’ [sic], 2–3; Charles Keck papers, c.1905–c.1954, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Box 1, Folder 1, ‘Work Done 1905–1922’, 1.
16 Mallouchou-Tufano (n. 11), 51.
17 J. C. Nichols in Planning for Permanence. The Speeches of J.C. Nichols, The State Historical Society of Missouri, ‘Value of the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Atkins Museum of Fine Arts to Kansas City and the Middle West’ (9 January 1935), 3–4, The J. C. Nichols Company Records (KC106) – Speech JCN029, <https://files.shsmo.org/manuscripts/kansas-city/nichols/JCN029.pdf>, accessed 2 June 2023.
18 Ibid., 5.
19 J. C. Nichols, ‘Dedicatory Talk by J. C. Nichols on the Occasion of the Opening of the W. R. Nelson Collection of Art’, 1933, J. C. Nichols Nelson Trust Office Files, RG 80/10, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.
20 For information about Nichols’ dedicatory speech, see K. C. Wolferman, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. A History (Columbia, MO, 2020), 120–1; M. Churchman and S. Erbes, High Ideals and Aspirations. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 1933–1993 (Kansas City, MO, 1993), 119. For information about Nichols’ influence on real estate development and his racist innovations in the use of covenants, see below and notes 84–7.
21 <https://nelson-atkins.org/about/#history>, accessed 2 June 2023.
22 Scattered over the north and south lawns as if the monumental, neoclassical structure of the museum itself were a badminton net, each titanic birdie weighs nearly three tons and stands eighteen feet tall. <https://art.nelson-atkins.org/objects/16574>, accessed 2 June 2023.
23 K. Lu, ‘Nelson-Atkins is First in Yelp's Ranking of best US museums; World War I Museum is fifth’, The Kansas City Star (2015), 14 December 2015, <https://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/article49766630.html>, accessed 2 June 2023.
24 <https://www.nelson-atkins.org/about/>, accessed 2 June 2023. See Wolferman (n. 20), Chs. 1–2 for detailed discussion of the bequests of Atkins and Nelson.
25 Contemporary commentators directly attribute both Mary Atkins’ and William Rockhill Nelson's bequests for the foundation of an art museum to their European travels, and they associate the possibility of a museum with civic and cultural development. Indeed, Nelson is compared in one column from the KC Star to Lorenzo Medici, there connected with the Roman past and erroneously named as the founder of the Uffizi. For Atkins, see: ‘Mary Atkins Memorial Services Revives Memorial of Museum Founder’, The Kansas City Times, 22 October 1936, D/20; ‘Gift for Art is Timely’, The Kansas City Times, 17 October 1911, 3. For Nelson, see: ‘If Thou Seek His Monument…’, The Kansas City Star, 10 December 1933, D10.
26 The land on which the Nelson-Atkins sits was the home to Missouria, Oto, Kansa, Osage, Shawnee, and Delaware Peoples, as noted in the Museum's ‘Land Acknowledgement’: <https://nelson-atkins.org/about/land-acknowledgment/>, accessed 2 June 2023. For an overview of how modern constructs of Western civilization and Greek antiquity have been used to support white supremacism, see R. F. Kennedy, ‘“Western Civilization”: White Supremacism and the Myth of a White Ancient Greece’, in E. Niklasson (ed.), Polarized Pasts. Heritage and Belonging in Times of Political Polarization (New York, 2023), 88–109. The invocation of the classical architectural antecedents to support constructions of white supremacy in the United States does not begin with the Nelson-Atkins. S. Marquardt has situated the near-contemporary (1931) reconstruction of the Parthenon in Nashville in the context of white supremacy: S. Marquardt, ‘The Nashville Parthenon Glorifies Ancient Greece – and the Confederacy’, Eidolon (2018), 15 January, <https://eidolon.pub/the-heirs-of-athens-of-the-south-a8b730b84de3>, accessed 29 March 2024; see also B. F. Wilson III, The Parthenon of Pericles and its Reproduction in America (Nashville, 1937), 18–21, where the reproduction of the Parthenon is implicitly linked to an idealized, slave-holding past. Thomas Jefferson's neoclassical architectural designs and white supremacy have been linked in M. O. Wilson, ‘Race, Reason, and the Architecture of Jefferson's Statehouse’, in L. DeWitt and C. Piper (eds.), Thomas Jefferson. Architect (Norfolk, 2019), 88–9, 95.
27 Wight's more classicizing vision for the grounds did not materialize. An outside landscape architecture firm was hired, which carried out its own designs. See Churchman and Erbes (n. 20), 133–40.
28 Fowler (n. 15). The Nelson-Atkins opened to the public on 11 December 1933 (Churchman and Erbes [n. 20], 39).
29 Fowler (n. 15). See also Churchman and Erbes (n. 20), 122ff.
30 Fowler (n. 15).
31 See n. 15 for Wight's likely dates of travel to the Parthenon.
32 See n. 25. See Wolferman (n. 20), 21–5 on Nelson's efforts at the beautification and modernization of Kansas City.
33 T. Wight, Plans, Drawings, Specs, etc., 1930, Box 1, Folder: ‘General Specifications…Nelson Gallery…Atkins Museum’, page 30, ‘Sculptural Panels’, RG 68/01, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Archives, Kansas City, Missouri. See also the transcript of A Frame of Mind. Episode 3: First You Have to See It, a podcast associated with the Nelson-Atkins: <https://nelson-atkins.org/nelson-atkins-at-home/listen-at-home/frame-of-mind/have-to-see-it/transcript/>, accessed 4 June 2023.
34 Wight, ‘General Specifications’ (n. 33), 29.
35 Churchman and Erbes (n. 20), 128.
36 ‘Amazed at Art Gallery’, The Kansas City Star, 19 March 1932, 2.
37 Ibid.
38 Wight, ‘General Specifications’ (n. 33), 30.
39 ‘Amazed at Art Gallery’ (n. 36).
40 Keck, ‘Speech to the National Sculptors Society’ (n. 15), 2–3. See also discussion in n. 15.
41 Keck, ‘Work Done’ (n. 15), 1. See also discussion in n. 15.
42 Charles Keck papers, c.1905–c.1954, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Box 1, Folder 4, ‘Speech to Allied Artists’, 1–2.
43 Ibid., 2.
44 Churchman and Erbes (n. 20), 129–30, discuss the formal resemblance of the Nelson-Atkins reliefs to the frieze and metopes of the Parthenon and connect the grandeur of Keck's figure of Fortitude to the depiction of divinities on the Greek temple. However, the ideological connections to be discussed here are not explained by Churchman and Erbes. See also Wolferman (n. 20), 124, who notes the racial ideology of the Keck reliefs.
45 R. Kousser, ‘Destruction and Memory on the Athenian Acropolis’, The Art Bulletin 91 (2009), 277; K. A. Schwab, ‘Celebrations of Victory: The Metopes of the Parthenon’, in J. Neils (ed.), The Parthenon. From Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge, 2005), 167.
46 Hurwit (n. 6) 106, 115–16.
47 Kousser (n. 45), 275; Valavanis (n. 1), 66.
48 Kousser (n. 45), 263, 275–7; Valavanis (n. 1), 74.
49 In any event, the Acropolis Museum in Athens displayed casts of the Elgin Marbles (Mallouchou-Tufano [n. 11], 48–9).
50 See n. 15.
51 A. Michaelis, Der Parthenon (Leipzig, 1871), 36 §31.
52 See E. Hall, Inventing the Barbarian. Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy (Oxford, 1989), 56–101. For more recent debate and overview, see J. M. Hall, ‘Ancient Greek Ethnicities: Towards a Reassessment’, BICS 58 (2015), 24–5.
53 E. Hall (n. 52), 99–100.
54 See T. J. Figueira, ‘Introduction’, in T. J. Figueira and C. Soares (eds.), Ethnicity and Identity in Herodotus (London, 2020), 1–7, for an overview of important themes related to ethnicity in Herodotus, especially p. 7, which outlines the key differences between Greek and non-Greek ethnicity for Herodotus.
55 See also T. Harrison, ‘The Persian Invasions’, in E. J. Bakker, I. J. F. de Jong, and H. van Wees (eds.), Brill's Companion to Herodotus (Leiden, 2002), 553.
56 On ethnicity in Herodotus, see R. V. Munson, ‘Herodotus and Ethnicity’, in J. McInerney (ed.), A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean (Chichester and Malden, MA, 2014), 341–55.
57 P. J. Rhodes, ‘The Impact of the Persian Wars on Classical Greece’, in E. Bridges, E. Hall, and P. J. Rhodes (eds.), Cultural Responses to the Persian Wars. Antiquity to the Third Millennium (Oxford, 2007), 36.
58 Ibid., 36–8.
59 See also Wolferman (n. 20), 122–4, and Churchman and Erbes (n. 20), 129–30.
60 Charles Keck papers, c.1905–c.1954, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Box 1, Folder 7, ‘Bas-Reliefs: William Rockhill Gallery of Art and Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri’; ‘In Art Gallery's Stone Walls Historic Scenes are Forming’, The Kansas City Star, Sunday 24 January 1932, D1. These descriptions are also quoted in Churchman and Erbes (n. 20), Appendix 2.
61 Keck (n. 60), 1.
62 ‘A Note of Grandeur Pervades Art Gallery's Classics Beauty’, The Kansas City Star, 10 December 1933, D1. This quotation is identical to language found in the 24 January 1932 edition of the Star (n. 60).
63 ‘Art of Sculptor and Painter Adds to Beauty of Nelson Gallery’, The Kansas City Star, 10 December 1933, 4.
64 Keck (n. 60), 1.
65 Ibid., 1–2.
66 Ibid., 2.
67 J. Neils, The Parthenon Frieze (Cambridge, 2001), Ch. 7. Churchman and Erbes (n. 20), 129–30, also note the influence of the Parthenon frieze on Keck.
68 J. Neils, ‘“With Noblest Images on All Sides”: The Ionic Frieze of the Parthenon’, in J. Neils (ed.), The Parthenon. From Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge, 2005), 201.
69 Ibid., 220–1, quote from 220.
70 Keck (n. 60), 2.
71 Ibid.
72 Panel 5 uses the ‘raging warrior’ archetype, a common stereotype of Native Americans, related to the ‘noble savage’ vs. ‘wild savage’ dichotomy. See N. J. Parezo, ‘The Indian Fashion Show: Fighting Cultural Stereotypes with Gender’, Journal of Anthropological Research 69 (2013), 320–1. See also the podcast associated with the Nelson-Atkins, A Frame of Mind. Episode 3: First You Have to See It (n. 33).
73 Keck (n. 60), 2.
74 M. Warner, Monuments and Maidens. The Allegory of the Female Form (Berkeley, 1985), 87.
75 Ibid., 87, 124, 200.
76 Ibid., Ch. 6, esp. 124.
77 The Kansas City Star (n. 60). This quotation is identical to language found in the 10 December 1933 edition of the Star (n. 62).
78 Fowler (n. 15).
79 Kousser (n. 45), 277; Schwab (n. 45), 167; Michaelis (n. 51), 36 §31.
80 Keck (n. 60), 1.
81 Keck (n. 60), 2.
82 R. Pearson and B. Pearson, The J. C. Nichols Chronicle. The Authorized Story of the Man, His Company, and His Legacy, 1880–1994 (Lawrence, KS, 1994), 92.
83 Ibid.
84 S. Stevens, ‘J. C. Nichols and Neighborhood Infrastructure: The Foundations of American Suburbia’, in D. Mutti Burke, J. Roe and J. Herron (eds.), Wide-Open Town. Kansas City in the Pendergast Era (Lawrence, KS, 2018) 59, 68. See also W. S. Worley, J. C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City. Innovation in Planned Residential Communities (Columbia, MO, 1990), 144–55, and C. Stark, ‘J. C. Nichols’ Whites-only Neighborhoods, Boosted by Star's Founder, Leave Indelible Mark’, The Kansas City Star, 20 December 2020, <https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article247787885.html>, accessed 4 June 2023.
85 K. F. Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development. The Kansas City Experience, 1900–2010 (Albany, 2014), 42–6; Stevens (n. 84) 68–71.
86 Stark (n. 84). See also K. Hardy, ‘The Kansas City Star Removes Name and Image of Its Founder, William Rockhill Nelson’, The Kansas City Star, 10 January 2021, <https://www.kansascity.com/article248331765.html>, accessed 4 June 2023.
87 On the exclusivity of Nelson's developments, see J. R. Shortridge, Kansas City and How it Grew, 1822–2011 (Lawrence, KS, 2012), 79–80. On the literal and metaphorical interconnectedness of these developments, see Worley (n. 84), 63–8. See also Stevens (n. 84) 59–61.
88 Nichols (n. 19), 4.
89 Pearson and Pearson (n. 82), 92.
90 Ibid., 93, with quote of Longstreth, R., ‘J. C. Nichols, the Country Club Plaza, and Notions of Modernity’, Harvard Architecture Review 5 (1986), 120–35Google Scholar.
91 Pearson and Pearson (n. 82), 215.
92 Sanz, M. J., ‘El Giraldillo, La Mujer Guerrera, y Su Relación con La Pequeña Escultura’, Laboratorio de Arte 20 (2007), 111–20Google Scholar.
93 Dodd, M., Kansas City Then and Now II (Kansas City, MO, 2003), 228Google Scholar.