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Leitch Makes Changes at Kansas City Museum: New Director Has Big Plans for Exhibits

Posted on: Wednesday, 22 March 2006, 06:00 CST

By Joe Lambe, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Mar. 22--A three-inch roach lumbered in front of Kansas City artist, educator and museum director Christopher Leitch, who acted fast.

He plopped a track light shade over the insect to make a holding cell.

Then electricians came into the room at the Kansas City Museum at Corinthian Hall to say that a storm knocked out a leg of electricity. Leitch, 45, kicked a leg up in a joking manner and took down the phone number for the electric company.

The man sometimes known for a Zen-like spontaneity in his art started in January as the director of the museum at 3218 Gladstone Blvd.

Leitch calls Corinthian Hall the mother ship, and he and Union Station officials have plans to make it sail.

The Kansas City Museum at Union Station took shape because officials tied to the hall wanted a new site for a science museum. But then Corinthian Hall faded from memory, fell into disrepair and many people still think it is closed, Leitch said.

Others sometimes drop in see exhibits that ended decades ago, like the loved-to-death igloo that children once played inside.

"It's my sad duty to report that the igloo has melted," Leitch said. "It's because everything we do here now is so hot."

A current exhibit of African-American quilts from the last 120 years is drawing crowds, he said, and he hopes other new shows, lectures and attractions will do the same.

The city has just spent about $1.5 million for external repair work to the buildings. Plans are in place for about $2.8 million more, and it's Leitch's job to steer the retooled mother ship.

His skills at the helm come from a diverse background.

Leitch graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute and served as assistant dean there for 13 years. He also served as an assistant director of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, and he has a master's degree in visual arts and critical theory from Goddard College in Vermont.

And he was raised Catholic, converted to Buddism and sometimes uses Zen-like principles in his own art and life.

For instance, he throws things in the air or pulls slips of paper from a bowl to decide colors to use or whether to draw with eyes open or closed. A one-word poem on paper is an orange drawing of "What" but the name of it is "What Upside Down and Backward," because he drew it upside down and backward.

Leitch also wraps natural fabrics around certain molds and mildews to make permanent organic patterns in the cloth.

His past has given him a feel for how objects tell stories, he said. "I think I have a sense of how a thing can talk about other things."

He will be using that in exhibits that will tell the history of Corinthian Hall and its creator, lumber baron Robert A. Long and his family. Long was a daring philanthropist who played an important role in Kansas City coming of age as it moved away from the frontier, cows and crime, Leitch said.

Long's daughters, including famous equestrian Loula Long Combs, donated the 1910 beaux-arts mansion and its outbuildings to the city after their father died. The city owns and is responsible for maintaining the property, which is operated by Union Station Kansas City Inc.

Now thousands of Long family items are in storage, and Leitch and Union Station officials want to use many of them.

"The house itself is the most important object in the collection because it has so much to tell about this family and this city coming of age," he said. "There aren't many buildings of this quality left in this part of the world."

Long built Corinthian Hall and Longview Farm with its 40-room farmhouse and donated heavily to build Grecian Ionic Independence Boulevard Christian Church at 606 Gladstone Blvd.

He also created a planned city in Washington state for his workers and by his death in 1934 had lost most of his fortune, Leitch said. "He was a real risk taker; he truly believed that those who did well had to do well by the country."

Long was temperate and austere in his habits but not in luxury. He traveled in a lush parlor car and a Pierce-Arrow Limousine, and he and his daughter spent fortunes on horse carriages and training, breeding and showing horses. Corinthian Hall was furnished lavishly with old and ornate European furniture and richly textured draperies and rugs.

Long's taste was influenced by other extremely rich people on the coasts, Leitch said, and "maybe what was considered the height of elegance then is now considered a little overdone."

He said he hopes to use some of the stored furnishings to restore a couple of rooms to as they were when the Long family used them -- "a sort of historical lifestyles of the rich and famous."

And then there is the story of Loula Long Combs. A permanent exhibit on her and her career will open soon in the outbuildings, he said.

There will also be an exhibit shaped from photos the museum has from the studio of photographer Warner Untersee. It will show Kansas City from after World War II to the 1960s and include beautiful cars of the 1950s and the name plate of the now demolished Emery, Bird, Thayer department store Downtown Kansas City.

"It's a wonderful opportunity to pay a visit to a Kansas City that is no more," Leitch said.

Not all is new. A popular seasonal museum feature will stay.

"We can never lose the fairy princess," he said. "She will live eternally."

The fairy princess arrives in a carriage in December and children whisper to her what presents they want. The tradition started in a Downtown department store in the 1930s.

As Leitch is speaking, workers came into the room looking for a way to the third floor because the lost electricity knocked out the elevator. Leitch pulled aside a quilt and showed them a stairway door.

"In no other job can you talk to preschoolers about the fairy princess and also show workers the way upstairs," Leitch said.

He turned his attention to the trapped roach. Exterminators control them, he said, but the construction woke a few up.

As a buddist, Leitch said "to cause harm to any living creature is not advisable."

He slipped cardboard under it and the light shade, carried the roach out to the yard and released it.

"That's the robin's role in life, not mine," Leitch said.

As for its future, he said, "the robins will be here soon."

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To reach Joe Lambe, Jackson County courts reporter, call (816) 234-4314 or send e-mail to jlambe@kcstar.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

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Source: The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri)

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