He also had to engage the extraordinary group of sculptures placed within the undulating topography of the grounds. The challenge for Goldsworthy, then, was to design something of similar scale to the Shuttlecocks, preferably without public protest. Though initially met with derision and hostility, the Shuttlecocks have become beloved public artworks, even serving as an iconic symbol of Kansas City. In the early 1990s, the Soslands had commissioned Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen to create four enormous Shuttlecocks for the lawn of the museum campus. The long-awaited opportunity came about when the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Hall Family Foundation decided to honor two important supporters of their sculpture park, Morton and Estelle Sosland, with a special commission. “ Walking Wall connects into a network of existing veins feeding into it.” “They’re good honest walls,” he observed. When he finally visited Kansas City at the invitation of the museum, he was intrigued to find them playing such an important part in the built environment. Goldsworthy has been fascinated by stone walls for his entire career. The affluent neighborhood surrounding the museum, which is built on the former estate of newspaper magnate William Rockhill Nelson, features block after residential block bordered by low-stacked stone walls. “This is a work I’ve wanted to make for years,” Goldsworthy explained. Facing something like a magnificent scattering of puzzle pieces, the crew began the process of sorting individual chunks of Kansas Cottonwood limestone by size and color, ranging from buttery yellow to Trumpian orange, to lichenized black and creamy white.

The first order of business was to unpack many dozens of pallets of weathered stone quarried long ago. wallers and two handfuls of local stone movers, was conjuring up his latest site-specific installation, Walking Wall, at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. It was the beginning of March, and Andy Goldsworthy, with the help of a select crew led by four veteran U.K. A blanket of fine, dry snow greeted the wallers on their first morning of work in Kansas City.

Andy goldsworthy stone