The 1933 Nelson-Atkins building embodies the traditional role of an art museum within society, an institution dedicated to collecting and preserving significant cultural artifacts. The symmetrical fronts, processional approach, elevated piano nobile, impervious stone perimeter, axial circulation, and hierarchical organization of rooms together monumentalize the visitor's encounter with the works of art. The charge given us to expand the original building offered the chance to fundamentally transform the museum toward a more open relationship with the city and develop a more subjective engagement with the art. During the competition briefing we realized that the expansive sculpture park, open to the public at all hours, could be the catalyst for a new museum architecture -- one of landscape as much as building -- joined to the exemplary original "Temple of Art." Traversing from the existing building across its sculpture park, the five built "lenses" form new spaces and angles of vision. From the movement through the landscape and threaded between the light openings, exhilarating new experiences of the existing Museum are formed. Circulation and exhibition merge as one can look from one level to another, from inside to outside. The "meandering" path in the sculpture garden above has its sinuous compliment in open flow through the continuous level of new galleries. Glass lenses bring different qualities of light to the galleries while the sculpture garden's pathways wind through them.