Morton Sosland, former editor and man behind The Nelson’s shuttlecocks, dead at 93
Back in the early 1990s, Morton Sosland and his wife wanted to give Kansas City a gift that would inspire.
Outside The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in 1994, Sosland introduced the massive shuttlecocks — the once controversial giant badminton birdies that have since become an iconic image for the city — and he told the crowd he always found something new each time he looked at them.
“Yet, there’s always that amazing invitation to look up, to scan the sky, and to wonder whence these wonderful pieces came,” he said, using a hint of the eloquence and intellect many in this community came to know and rely on.
On Thursday, Kansas City lost Sosland, former editor-in-chief of Sosland Publishing Co. and an art patron for decades who, with his family, quietly and generously contributed to the city’s cultural community. Sosland was 93.
Funeral services will be held 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, according to an obituary.
Just two days earlier, after the death of co-founder of H&R Block, Henry Bloch, Sosland spoke with The Star about his friend. Sosland called Bloch “very warm-hearted, very kind, very thinking about other people. A very kind and gentle gentleman.”
Now, others are sharing memories of Sosland, who was in New York last week for a board meeting and planned to spend the weekend going to the opera. But he came home to Kansas City early because he wasn’t feeling well, friends said.
“I think everyone would agree he was one of the smartest minds that Kansas City had,” Julián Zugazagoitia, director and CEO of The Nelson-Atkins, told The Star Saturday. “He was a trailblazer, sometimes ahead of his time. Certainly a person who puts things in motion.”
Sosland led his family’s publishing business in Kansas City, where he spent the majority of his 72 years with the company as the publisher and editor, according to Food Business News, one of the trade publications owned by Sosland Publishing. An obituary the publication posted Friday described Sosland as “a revered figure in the Kansas City and grain-based foods business communities.”
He joined Sosland Publishing Company in 1947, where he initially worked for his uncle, Samuel Sosland, one of the three brothers who founded the company and its The Southwestern Miller weekly magazine in 1922. Morton Sosland created and wrote much of the editorial page for several of the company magazines, including Food Business News and Milling & Baking News.
Outside the business, Sosland, along with his wife of 72 years, Estelle, made a significant impact on the Kansas City community, as well as The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Arts, for more than five decades. Sosland is survived by his wife, his three children and several grandchildren.
The couple gave their private collections of American Indian art to the museum, and Sosland was considered a “catalyst in the creation” of the American Indian art department and galleries, according to Gaylord Torrence, senior curator.
“Over 16 years of working together, he became a dear and treasured friend,” Torrence said in a release about Sosland’s passing. “Morton’s passion for life, profound curiosity, and overarching generosity of spirit made him the most extraordinary patron.”
In March, Sosland and his wife attended a reception celebrating the start of artist Andy Goldsworthy’s “Walking Wall,” which the Hall Family Foundation commissioned in honor of the couple. Sosland often would drive past the work of art as it was being constructed.
“We are humbled by what he accomplished in his many decades as a civic leader and how he raised the level of what Kansas City is,” Zugazagoitia wrote in an email to museum board members, volunteers, staff and friends after Sosland died.
He told them that he was sad that Sosland would not be here for the four more installments and see The Walking Wall evolve.
“Yet I now see it as a symbol of the many things that he put in motion and that will continue to evolve and ‘walk’ maintaining his spirit and legacy for ever present,” Zugazagoitia wrote in the email.
Much like the shuttlecocks, created by artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. When Sosland first introduced the gift in 1994, he said he hoped the art would bring joy for years to come.
“It is that lifting of our vision and spirit that I — and my family, too — hope will be one of the many happy benefits of this gift,” Sosland said then.
“We invite you to smile and even to laugh — how wonderful — when you now look upon this museum’s grounds and its new inhabitants.”
This story was originally published April 26, 2019 at 7:36 PM.
