Walking Wall

Andy Goldsworthy, always attendant to place and materials, designed Walking Wall to echo the fieldstone walls across Kansas City. The weathered and freshly quarried stone came from the famed Kansas Flint Hills. In March 2019, Walking Wall began a nine-month journey from the east side of the Nelson-Atkins campus to the threshold of the Bloch Building. An international team of dry stone wallers and assistants built the wall in five stages. In each performative stage, the wallers painstakingly dismantled the stonework from the rear of the structure and added it to the front, edging the wall forward. In December, Walking Wall resolved, reforming the landscape of the museum, crossing the border between inside and out, and ultimately challenging the nature of walls themselves.

Purchase: acquired through the generosity of the Hall Family Foundation in honor of Estelle and Morton Sosland