Outgoing Nelson-Atkins Director Marc Wilson talks shit on Independence

Marc Wilson, director of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, will retire next year, joining fellow museum heads around the country in a mini exodus. Tyler Green, whose Modern Art Notes blog is essential reading for anyone who cares about, uh, modern art, checked in with Wilson during a recent KC visit. In Green’s interview, published on MAN last week in two parts, Wilson mentions something pretty cool: “A third of [Nelson-Atkins] attendance now comes from households with incomes of less

than $55,000. That tells you the people who are coming are not just on

our lofty donor boards.”

Wilson also offers a candid tidbit about life in the business of big-time museum management. See, you gotta deal with the nonbelievers. As he explains about the famous Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen sculptures on the museum’s lawn:

At the time some of the reaction to [the] Shuttlecocks was nasty, nasty, nasty.

A lady sent me a box with her return address on it. It was from Independence,

Missouri. I opened it up and it was a diaper full of baby poop along with a note

saying that this was her daughter’s work of art and it was certainly the equal

of the Shuttlecocks.

Thus was recorded the first attempt ever at performance art by an Independence resident.

Here’s the first part of the interview, and here’s the rest.

(Photo from the Nelson-Atkins)