KANSAS CITY — One of the most loved paintings in Kansas City is having a new conversation. At The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the focus exhibition Reflections of Nature: Monet’s Water Lilies and Art Nouveau places Claude Monet’s luminous Water Lilies alongside works on paper and decorative arts from the Art Nouveau period. It is on view now in Gallery 130, and admission is free.
Monet painted his Water Lilies between 1915 and his death in 1926, and the museum’s celebrated canvas is often described as a culmination of Impressionist painting — a shimmering surface with no horizon, where light, water and reflection dissolve into one another.
The exhibition is part of “Monet in Conversation,” an ongoing series that explores Monet’s dual role as influencer and influenced, with a new theme each year. This time the dialogue partner is Art Nouveau, the style that flourished across Europe between 1890 and 1910. Monet was not part of that movement, but his late work shares its spirit: fluid brushwork, organic rhythm and forms borrowed from the natural world.
Seen side by side, the paintings, prints and decorative objects reveal how artists across Europe were all looking at nature — and learning from one another — at the same moment.
For Kansas City, it is one more reason to wander the Nelson-Atkins this fall: a masterpiece you may already love, made new by the company it keeps.
Photo: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
