Four major art projects for new KCI terminal revealed
 

The first of four major art projects for the new single terminal airport at KCI have been revealed.

More than 1,000 artists from around the world submitted inquiries after Kansas City announced an international search for artists.
The city said the four works of art were chosen because they either reflected the wonder of travel or Kansas City history.

The budget for artwork at KCI’s new terminal is $5.65 million. Kansas City’s single-terminal airport is expected to open on budget and on time in early 2023.

“The fact that we’ve been through a pandemic over the last year and yet this project remains on time, on schedule, and on budget is a testament to the good work of the team,” said Justin Meyer with the KC Aviation Department.

You can see the renderings of the art projects in the gallery below.

Entitled "Molten Swing"
https://fox4kc.com/wp-content/upload...resize=792,416

Entitled "The Air up There"
https://fox4kc.com/wp-content/upload...resize=792,485

Entitled "Ornithology"
https://fox4kc.com/wp-content/upload...resize=792,374

Entitled "Fountain of Resonance"
https://fox4kc.com/wp-content/upload...resize=792,496

"Molten Swing" looks kind of like a mosaic dog or cat to me, it might look cool though but not sure what to make of it at this point.

"The Air up There" simply looks like some lights on the ceiling, again it might look better when you're actually there I hope.

"Ornithology" reminds me of those attacking creatures in the Pitch Black movie. You just knew one of the artwork they chose would have a WTF moment and this is it.

"Fountain of Resonance" I approve of this one. :thumb:

Thoughts?

https://fox4kc.com/news/art-projects...inal-revealed/

Tax payer money getting put to good use. lol Where are the BLM murals for the parking lot?

Seems like the best possible use of $5.65 million.

LMAO
At least you have something to look at after your flight is canceled.

No money for the homeless, but art- hell yeah! This is the kind of pathetic leadership we have in KC.

The four pieces of artwork on Bartle hall is atrocious, I don't think anyone in KC pays much attention to them actually. I remember many people didn't like them and the city saying they could be replaced with something else over the years.

Umm that didn't happen.

Molten swing and ornithology are references to Charlie Parker tunes, pretty cool. As someone who has tried to play his music and understand his contribution to music, I got to say I'm pretty pleased. Sounds like somebody gets it.

Correction molten swing is reference to Benny Motens' moten swing, my bad. Great tune. Fun fact, Bennie Motens' grave was forgotten until a friend of mine found it, without a proper headstone. He brought it to my attention and I pointed him towards the coda jazz fund who paid for a headstone.

Tailgated and barbequed.

I was hoping for a mural of a nude Andy Reid...oh well. Maybe the next airport will have one.

They should have hired Rasputin.

Dumbasses.

Art is an important element of a functioning society. Artists are crucial to imagination and inspiration. Money well spent

dont care.

just a waste of $$

Also, I do agree with this.

People don't realize how often their extra tax dollars are spent on beautifying spaces and they don't even realize it. They look at any local public works project and admire having the space or the building or whatever it is, but never want to hear about the "art" price tag that went into that area.

Let's say KCI cut the costs down and didn't put anything up at all to save the $5.3 million. People would bitch. Okay, so what if they just put something up in its place but nothing artsy fartsy and weird? Like... what?

A banner from Party City? People will bitch about how shitty it looks.

A sign that says "Welcome to KCI" or something like that? Unless you put $$$ into the materials and make it look nice, people will still bitch.

How about one of those cost-efficient murals of blown up black-and-white photographs of the Kansas City area? Or panoramic images of the city across the wall? One of those is a lot more expensive than you think, and is actually bordering on the pricetag it would cost for one of those art projects.

How about a good ol' fountain instead of a shitty artist rendering of a fountain? Uh-huh. And fountains aren't expensive at all!

It's one thing if you never wanted a new airport in the first place. But that's not what happened. The new airport is here, and if you're going to dip in and build the damn thing, you need to make it a great ****ing airport. Otherwise, what's the point?

Fountains, BBQ, Negro Baseball, KC Zoo, Tailgating, Chiefs, Royals, Truman all need rep in the murals.

I'd rather they spend 50 million more on art projects around the city before we give the homeless one cent.

What a waste

Should have just put up a few murals of LJS platter and used the money to buy everyone in Johnson County PornHub premium.

Aren't the airlines paying for the project?

On time but not sure about the budget claim. The voters approved 1.5 billion for the new airport somehow KCMO thought tacking on an extra billion was aok.

The city won't take care of this one any better than the last. This new greenhouse sure won't last as long as the last.

Nobody goes to an airport to look at art. They want to get in and get out. Something the old one was very good at.

I say fill it with slot machines

Money pissed away. 20g and some scholarship cash and the Art Institute would redo it every 6 months and stay local

Finally it won't feel like you're flying into Mogadishu

Traveling is like going to a sporting event. Something about it makes people feel okay dropping cash for overpriced food and drink. Pre-Covid, you were lucky to find an open spot at a bar/restaurant in O'hare or Midway.

I was hoping for some lizard illuminati stuff so we could beat Denver. Also something that would be more garish than Blucifer.

I was fine with the old shitty airport where I could be on the plane, and then one minute later be outside of the terminal.

Yep. At DEN, it's a good 25 minutes from getting off the plane until you're in your car.

Yeah, it's pretty easy. But at least now we can have out of towners say stuff like "Wow, this airport has convinced me KC is a first rate city!" and "They had a PF Changs, this is truly amazing!"

Dammit, more walking required

https://fox4kc.com/wp-content/upload...resize=792,374

Cowboys and Aliens
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pr...rRA2I7-Ap1AW8A

Disc

https://www.palletforks.com/dw/image...w=1001&sh=1000

Cultivator

https://www.pikpng.com/pngl/m/88-889...or-clipart.png

This looks pretty cool

Now, THIS is art.

Deck the whole ****ing airport out in Mahomes art. Let everyone know who's town this is.

People bitch and whine about ugly shit, buddy. Don't know what else to tell you.

Abstract art sucks. Never been a fan of it.
As for the design of the new terminal, it's a simple rehashed design of previous terminal models found domestically and throughout the world. Certainly an improvement to the current terminal.

Whenever I see the works of Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko, it makes me want to vomit. Great art should have meaning, should be understood and most importantly should be extremely hard to create by an average person. Picaso's earlier work for example was great and then he tried to reinvent himself with that cubism shit.

Its an airport in the taint of the midwest bruh

I guess it depends on what you want of your travel. I fly pretty frequently and just want to get in and out as soon as possible. I haven’t been to KCI in a while, but I would imagine it would be pretty boring to have a long layover there compared to some of the other airports that have huge shopping areas that make you feel like you are in a mall. Many of them have similar artwork inside, although I haven’t paid enough attention to which pieces are at specific airports.

I haven't paid a ton of attention since I don't live there, but I thought the crux was its falling apart and its a security blindspot if anyone threatening was paying the least bit of attention. Plus airlines are like please bring this thing up until at least the 90s for us to continue servicing you.

I could be way off though.

Rothko and Pollock ARE extremely hard to re-create.

That's like saying any average person can be a famous photographer. How hard can it be? You just push a button!

If it was paid by taxes, and I don't know if it was, it basically cost everyone in the KC area $2.15. I think that is okay to beautify a public space.

Actually, both have been copied and sold for millions. There is an interesting show on Netflix about it. But your point is correct, they were very unique.

Y’all ****ers will bitch about anything.

I guarantee every single time a new airport has been built in this country they’ve set aside money for art/aesthetics. Get over it.

SWA customers.

From what I've read, no tax payer money and it's paid by the airlines.



THE HOMELESS THO!!!

You don't want to one-up our lizard people. Don't make the lizard people angry.

The KC airport?

I've been in a lot of airports, and the KC airport is probably my least favorite. It's confusing, has poor signage, little or no food, and when you go through security you're trapped in a little crate.

It is a great airport when everything is running correctly. But it's the worst place to be when you're early, there's a delay or there are long lines or anything like that. Being early at MCI is ****ing torture. I'd almost rather risk missing my flight and show up as late as possible than show up early and have to sit in the gate where there's one 2 stall bathroom and your choices of food are almost expired cold cuts or snack foods.

The two "restaurants" in the old airport were a disgusting joke.

This is the way.

Yeah. It may have been a fine airport before the stupid terrorists screwed everything up, but it sure seems like there should have been a better way to design it post-9/11.

DEN had the bad luck of opening just a few years before 9/11 so it was probably the newest large airport in the country that wasn't designed for security. I wasn't flying as much in those years so I don't recall what it was like when it first opened. I think the big security area today was mostly open lounge. But they had to implement a notable change in passenger flow to put the security infrastructure into the terminal, which then turned the main visual focus into a bunch of lines of people. I remember being a bit disappointed in the change, but it's not like there was a choice.

I guess my point is that the 9/11 changes probably affected different airports differently. None of them were going to be good. DEN's was okay in the big scheme of things just because they coincidentally had a big open area that could be repurposed. KC's airport seemed like it was a really bad change.

I can do Pollock's most complex painting on Illustrator in less than 2 hrs. Rothko's maybe 10 mins at most.
Now Rembrandt or Da Vinci, that's extremely hard to replicate. Even the most skilled artist would take a long time to come close to perfectly achieve it. Rembrandt was a master at using light shadows. Incedibly realistic technique for its time.
Abstractism is a bullshit art movement. I compare it with the vegan movement.

No you can't. You can only attempt to copy it.

There's the rub.

Nevertheless, his paintings are rubbish art because they don't convey any meaning. You will have some so-called art expert tell you "but you have to look deeper to truly understand". That's the typical smokescreen argument you get from a Pollock apologist. What is there to understand when looking at a sheet covered in tiny paint splashes? There is no symmetry, no continuity, no structural shapes of any kind. Just paint splashes using a select group of colors. If an average minded person can't grasp the meaning of any of his paintings, maybe it's because they are meaningless paintings??

You can't marginalize that. It's dishonest.

He created a new medium using gravity. It's not splashes. And there is some symmetry to his work, it wouldn't appeal at all if it didn't. You mentioned Picasso, both he and Pollack were established artists, they were just thinking outside of the box..prolly for their own desires to create.

I've "reproduced" Bierstadt, Michelangelo, Parrish and Vallejo among others. All amazing artists. All with their own techniques and approaches.

I'm not a fan of abstract at all, but Pollack deserves the recognition he receives.

Airports are often engineering works of art themselves. Then they offer a large space that will be populated by thousands of people every day. The tradition and importance of architecture and artwork in mass transit goes all the way back to trains. No, almost no one go because of the art, but it is a very important element in city planning.

I believe the tile work at the "current" terminals were some of my favorite installations in the city, been gazing at it my entire life. Its an exciting visual that suggests the adventure that is just beginning, and it is there again welcoming me back home.

How about they focus on getting the ****ing thing completed as fast as is feasible?

Lots of those drinks are on a corporate card.

Art is to move a person, inspire reactions, give people something to interpret and explore themselves along the way.

Out of all of the great artists you could have mentioned, it seems like Pollock and Rothko are inspiring quite a bit of thought from you!!! :D

Are they not doing that?

It's modern day America, so no.

Alternatively, what meaningfulness is the average person getting from Mona Lisa, or really any portrait artist? Why should a person have to have an art history background just to know how and why anyone cares about Rembrandt.

Art is about emotion, inspiration. Applying rules about what is and isn't art is missing the whole point and is subjectively meaningless.

Your thinking of architecture. Architects make pretty pictures just like artists. The engineers then take that architect's dream or nightmare and make it work on paper and then in construction. I work with both and have great respect for engineers. Not so much architects.

I am not against the art placed in the terminal at all. I do know that traveling public in a rush will breeze right by it heading for gate or baggage without a glance. An airport terminal is not an art gallery it just isn't. My beef is with a perfectly fine airport that doesn't have a hub airline come and go there. The biggest users of that airport are UPS and FedEx. The biggest public airline is Southwest who has threatened and cut back flight over the years here and can bolt at a moment's notice. The city should have taken care of what they had renovated when needed. Instead, they choose to neglect routine maintenance for 20 years and left it in shambles. They will do the same with the new one and the taxpayer will be dealt the task of paying for it.

The average person isn't smart enough to "get" something from art.

Last I saw were right on schedule if not a bit ahead.

LMAO

The whole having 3 separate buildings for the terminals made it basically impossible for it to be renovated and made modern no matter what they did.

There was a renovation plan that was pretty nice and cheaper by I think Burns and Mac. The city would have none of that they wanted new.

The 3 terminals the airlines demanded. In fact 4 were originally planned for future growth. TWA, Pan AM and Fronteir made a lot of promises they didn't keep. With Jumbo Jets and SST it was promised to become a major hub for International Travel. When the SST fell through the airport plan collapsed with it.

I believe the 2 old terminals still remain I don't know if demolition is planned or they will be utilized when new is open.

Yes and barely in time for the 2023 NFL draft scheduled to be in Kansas city, hopefully there will be no delays so it will ready for that major event.

I like the looks of the new airport and the old one certainly need to be upgraded and its a good idea to have some art sprinkled in it as people can have something to look at instead of staring at their cell phone all the time. Walk around check out the art and eat in one of the restaurants.

The city did bungle spectacularly it finally getting started but that's for another conversation.

https://www.kcur.org/news/2021-04-07...ntury-terminal

NPR KCUR saying 1.5 billion terminalLMAO I guess the parking garage is a 1 billion dollar fee. A convenient way of saying they held up the 1.5 billion price tag the voters voted and approved. One fact though is the 1.5 figure included the garage. The extra billion is the city dicking around and not getting underway when construction costs were lower. The airport would be wrapping up construction now if not for the city.

And now they are dicking around building a new Broadway Bridge that they told the voters years ago they would do.

Yep

They spend more time naming it than getting going on it.

Art galleries are a very small portion of where art is located.

Either the tax payers pay for renovations or they pay for new development. Either way we are going to be on the hook somehow. Important infrastructure like this simply needs to be replaced eventually.

I hate losing the old airport because it fit my needs perfectly., But maintaining and replacing it is just a given.

Pollock and Rothko are two of my favorites, I love seeing them in person. Art isn't necessarily about having a specific meaning, it's about making you feel something. If you look at a piece and it evokes an emotional reaction, I would consider that art.

You're so ugly you could be a modern art masterpiece.

-Gunny

That's what I think of when I see this. lol

And the sad thing is that the renderings of the new Broadway Bridge are ****ing horrible.

Was kay Barnes in charge?

I don't think it looks bad, a little plain jane maybe. The design builder said they are restricted on building arches very high due to the airport being right there you see.

https://dpv85fgkqesen.cloudfront.net...?itok=JngoGOR9

Looks great!

(looks like every other airport built in the past 20 years, but that was kind of the point)

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