<table> </table> When the new Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art opens to the public Oct. 27, it may not have the architecture critics turning somersaults.</p><p>Artists and art lovers, on the other hand, have something to celebrate in architect Kyu Sung Woo&#8217;s quiet minimalist structure of white limestone and glass at Johnson County Community College.</p><p>Costing roughly $13 million and measuring 38,000 square feet, it&#8217;s the perfect container for art.</p><p>Put in motion by a $1.5 million gift from the Nerman Family of Leawood four years ago, the new museum has a permanent collection of more than 700 pieces and plans for 16 special exhibitions a year.</p><p>Woo&#8217;s design &#8212; a rectangular box that projects diagonally from another rectangular box toward the intersection of College Boulevard and Quivira Road &#8212; will let them shine.</p><p>Galleries defined by big walls and right angles and proportioned in accordance with the so-called golden mean or golden ratio are ideal for displaying large paintings and playing the straight man to unruly sculptures and installations.</p><p>Situated between the Carlsen Center and the new Regnier Center, with which it shares an airy atrium, the building asserts its presence through a Zenlike simplicity of form and materials.</p><p>Its power is most acutely felt in the spacious lobby, where a 16-foot-high, 140-foot-long glass curtain wall provides immediate connection with the surrounding campus and bathes the soft gray Spanish limestone floor in daylight.</p><p>In the galleries, clerestories and skylights admit natural light, which falls softly and subtly down the walls onto floors of 4-inch select quartersawn oak.</p><p>The museum&#8217;s most dramatic feature is the projecting box at the front, where the second story cantilevers over the first. A large off-center window provides a view into the distance over the museum&#8217;s front lawn, where director Bruce Hartman has plans for a monumental sculpture as well as concerts and other student gatherings.</p><p>The underside of the cantilever is where the art collection makes its debut in the form of a permanent light work commissioned from New York artist Leo Villareal.</p><p>Once inside, visitors will see two &#8220;Sound Suits&#8221; by Nick Cave on a low platform in the lobby, across from a recently acquired Nadine Robinson wall piece featuring a rhinestone-encrusted stereo speaker.</p><p>Hartman&#8217;s plans for 16 special exhibitions a year will mean a roughly 50 percent increase in the number of shows put on by local museums and major nonprofit art spaces. Local artists are a key part of the Nerman picture; so are contemporary American Indian artists.</p><p>And when it comes to trends, Hartman has a reputation for leading rather than following.</p><p>A major show called &#8220;American Soil&#8221; gets things off to an auspicious start in the first-floor special exhibition galleries. Large paintings and installations by six rising stars of American art take a critical look at American values through the prism of our relationship to the landscape.</p><p>A grand cascading stair leads from the lobby to three permanent collection galleries on the second floor, where a monumental robe fashioned from stainless-steel dog tags by Do-Ho Suh anchors large paintings by Brad Kahlhamer, Kerry James Marshall, Roger Shimomura and others.</p><p>Their diversity of perspectives on the human experience is typical of the collection overall.</p><p>Hartman is ecstatic about a newly acquired piece by Navajo weaver Martha Smith, showing the post 9/11 New York skyline. He has paired it with a &#8220;before&#8221; view (<em>with</em> the twin towers) lent by a private collector.