See who won a $2.18M deal for public art at KC’s new Barney Allis Plaza
When it is completed, Kansas City’s new Barney Allis Plaza — a $118 million outdoor plaza above a parking structure now under construction downtown — is to include features such as a dog park, a pavillion cafe, a play space and an area for concerts, even booked weddings.
It will also include public art.
On Monday morning, the city’s Municpal Arts Commission, after receiving submissions from 251 artists worldwide, approved awarding the project’s $2.18 million contract for public art to Gijs Van Vaerenbergh, a collaborative art duo based in Leuven, Belgium.
“Gijs Van Vaerenbergh’s work is spatial poetry,” Tiffany Meesha Thompson, a curatorial consultant with Petrichor Projects, who helped organize the city’s search, said in a prepared statement after the vote. “Their practice expands the possibilities of public art — creating environments that unfold around you. It’s an honor to bring their vision to the heart of Kansas City.”
Who is Gijs Van Vaerenbergh?
The company’s name combines those of its two artists, Pieterjan Gijs and Arnout Van Vaerenbergh. The artists are noted for their organic, archtectural and often large-scale sculptures.
On Friday, the artists, who joined the commission meeting by video, said the theme of their work would be “Kansas City Spirit, Memory of Resilience.”
Using steel tubes, illuminated at night, they planned to create almost ghost-like, abstract art that pays homage to the Kansas City Convention Hall that once occupied the site of Barney Allis, but which in 1900 was destroyed in a fire, but then was quickly rebuilt. The towering artwork would be crafted in six “fragments,” set at the corners and sides of the park’s periphery, and meant to evoke the architecture of the former hall.
“This is stunning. I’m almost speechless,” said Commissioner Kathleen McCarther.
Pieces of theirs include Forest Track, an elevated pathway of irregular shapes that winds through trees on a campus in Diepenbeek, Belgium.
Clausura, created out of thin steel rods,is an abstract and almost ghost-like outline of the abbey at Herkenrode. Folly, is a steel structure, a kind of modern ruin said to reference the structure of a old calf shed, set among the garden trees of Huis Doorn, a 19th century manor in the Netherlands.
Barney Allis Plaza
The 4-acre project is replacing the former Barney Allis Plaza, built in 1955 between 12th and 13th streets and Central and Wyandotte streets. The parking garage beneath the plaza had, over the decades, fallen into crumbling disrepair.
The new project, which is scheduled to be finished sometime in the fourth quarter of 2026, will be replacing the plaza’s 900-spot underground parking lot with one with just short of 600 parking spaces. That part of the plan is currently in the middle of construction.
The new plaza, which includes the deck and green space that lies atop the parking structure, has been designed by the architectural firm HOK, under general contractor McCown Gordon Kansas City.
The $2.18 million allocated is the largest investment the city has made in public art for a single project, second only to $5.65 million allocated for the new terminal at Kansas City International Airport, which opened in February 2023.
Public art competition
Unlike at KCI, in which grants were awarded some 28 artists, it was determined that Barney Allis Plaza project would benefit from employing an artist or artistic team with a single and cohesive vision.
Thirteen artist teams from the Kansas City area were among the 251 that submitted Requests for Qualifications (RFQs) for the project. Submissions — which were judged based on a criteria that included artistic excellence, prior experience, sensitivity to the site, and the endurance and suitibility of the pieces — were narrowed down to 13 candidates.
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That number was reduced to seven finalists by a shortlist committee that included Stephanie Fox Knappe, senior curator for Global Modern and Contemporary Art the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Jessica Hong, chief curator at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, JoAnne Northrup, executive director and chief curator at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Johnson County, Raechell Smith, the director/curator at the Kansas City Art Institute’s Emily and Todd Voth Artspace, and Tiffany Meesha Thompson, with Petrichor Projects.
The other finalists included New York and Paris-based artist Ghada Amer, New York-based artist Sanford Biggers, London-based artist Paul Cocksedge, Montreal artists Daily Tous Les Jours, New York’s Hugh Hayden and Ugo Rondinone, a Swiss-born artist also based in New York.
As part of the selection process, all finalists were invited to Kansas City to present their concepts in early June. The artists were interviewed by a “stakeholder panel” the included members of the Municipal Arts Commission, individuals from local arts institutes and city conventions leaders.
An ordinance to award the contract is expected go before the full City Council at their meeting Thursday.
This story was originally published August 8, 2025 at 10:44 AM.
