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THE BRUSH CREEK BULLETIN Volume 8, Issue 1 January/February 2006   NELSON-ATKINS MUSEUM SECURES PREMIERE PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art has acquired the complete Hallmark Photographic Collection, considered the most broad-ranging and important private collection of America photography. The collection of more than 6,500 works by 900 artists spans the entire 165-year history of photography, from 1839 to the present. The works themselves not only represent a comprehensive history of the innovations and achievements of photography as a medium, but also the unique documentation of the growth, triumphs and tragedies of the American experience for the last 150 years. A significant portion of the collection was provided as a gift by Hallmark with the balance of the collection purchased by the museum with funds donated to it by the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation. The acquisition establishes the Nelson-Atkins Museum as one of the premier museums in the world for photography. “Kingdom,” Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, a gelatin silver print with mixed media is a 2000 photograph from the Hallmark Photographic Collection currently part of the preview exhibition on view through April 30 at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Expanded Museum To House New Collection A selection of works is on view at the museum through April. The Hallmark Photography Collection will be on display in the expanded and renovated museum opening in 2007. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is undergoing a $350 million Campus Transformation Project adding the 165,000 square-foot Bloch Building by Steven Holl, renovation of the original 1933 Nelson-Atkins building, the reinstallation of its extensive collection, and the expansion of the museum’s Sculpture Park. The Sculpture Park is expected to reopen this fall. BCCP ENGAGES PARTNERS IN COMMUNITY-WIDE RACE RELATIONS DIALOGUE Brush Creek Community Partners is promoting involvement of its member organizations in a community-wide dialogue on race relations. The dialogue initiative, led by the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, is focused on engaging people in reading and discussing the book, Afraid of the Dark: What Whites and Blacks Need to Know About Each Other. By mid-February, more than 850 people in Kansas City had the book. A few hundred more will have the book by spring. Optimally, discussion of the book’s content and thoughts about it occurs in racially diverse groups. Discussion of the book is supported by the Dialogue Guide and Workbook developed by Afraid of the Dark’s author Jim Myers and Kansas City Urban League President and Chief Executive Officer Gwen Grant. Members of Brush Creek Community Partners have been encouraged to form reading circles to read and discuss the book by BCCP President Stan Archie. “Both the ends and the means of what we are working to accomplish as Brush Creek Community Partners is to erase racial barriers in our community,” said Archie in an January letter to members. “The best opportunity for that to happen in Kansas City is along the Brush Creek Corridor. One of the best and most solid first steps is to enhance dialogue and understanding between people of different races.” Archie is president and chief executive officer of Christian Fellowship Ministries. One partner organization acting on this opportunity is Mazuma Credit Union, which secured 50 books for members of its Board of Directors, Supervisory Committee, Executive Team and managers to read. Mazuma President and Chief Executive Officer Rob Givens said the financial organization will be reading and discussing Afraid of the Dark as an alternative form of diversity training for the next year or more. BRUSH CREEK COMMUNITY PARTNERS WEEK February 27 - March 4, 2006 Numerous units of blood and platelets saved the life of two-year-old Dylan Moore. Please donate blood. You never know when you'll need it. Community Blood Center 4040 Main 816-753-4040 www.bloodislife.org Monday and Friday -- 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday -- 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Saturday -- 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon PARTNER UPDATES Karen Vorst, professor of economics and a Fulbright Scholar in East/Central Europe, has been named interim dean of the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s College of Arts & Sciences. Vorst joined UMKC in 1980, served as interim chair of its English Department from 2003 through 2005 and most recently served as associate dean of the College. Vorst has received numerous honors, including the Shelby Storck Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Meritorious Service Award from the Missouri Valley Economics Assn. She was a Starr Symposium Scholar in 1993. UMKC will begin a national search for a new Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Recently published research involving Stowers Institute for Medical Research scientists is making significant contributions to the cancer field. Findings of scientists led by Jerry Workman, Stowers Institute investigator, provide important clues for understanding how normal cells can be transformed into malignant tumor cells in vivo. Their findings were published in the November 4, 2005 issue of Cell. The lab of Ting Xie, Stowers Institute associate investigator, has produced work that has implications for human stem cell transplants, which are currently being used to treat diseases, including leukemia. These findings were published in the November 1, 2005 issue of Developmental Cell, and were the result of collaboration with colleagues at Harvard Medical School and Rutgers University. Michael J. Carrozza, formerly a Senior Research Fellow at the Stowers Institute, and Jerry Workman, along with colleagues, have published findings related to the role of chromosomal proteins and histones in the process of gene transcription. The findings, made in collaboration with colleagues at The Scripps Research Institute, were published in the November 18, 2005 issue of the scientific journal Cell. Work led by the Director of Cardiovascular Outcomes Research at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute was identified as one of the top-ten scientific advances of 2005 by the American Heart Association. The results of a study led by John Spertus, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.C.C., were published in the September 2005 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The unprecedented medical research study conducted by the Heart Institute and collaborators at Washington University in St. Louis explores the relationship between genetic variations in the body’s receptors for â-blockers and differences in survival rates after discharge on the use of beta (â)-blocker. The study was funded in part by a $16 million grant from the National Institutes of Health and involved 735 Kansas City patients who received â-blocker therapy after acute coronary syndromes. Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute recently noted it conducted its 300th heart transplant since its program began in June 1985. UMB Financial Corporation is reaching out to a younger generation via audio broadcasting by launching its first podcast, available live on Apple's iTunes and umb.com. UMB is one of the first financial institutions in the country to produce a podcast. The UMB Financial Facts podcast is the first in a series of three podcasts on financial basics. The first podcast covers 401K management. The development along the Brush Creek Corridor involving Brush Creek Community Partner members will be recognized as Cornerstone Award Winners by the Economic Development Corporation of Kansas City in March. Swope Community Enterprises/Swope Community Builders is being recognized for The Shops on Blue Parkway, the 156,000 square foot retail and office complex, which opened last November along Blue Parkway at Elmwood. The Plaza Colonnade at 48th and Main Streets, was designed by BNIM Architects as both a home for an expanded Plaza Branch Library and a nine-story commercial retail complex. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art has received a $300,000 three-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for conservation science. The grant secures access for the museum’s Conservation Department and equipment unavailable onsite, creating a network of outside scientists who will advise on a project basis and strengthen the museum’s capacity to study and care for its collection of more than 34,500 works of art. The African Republic of Cameroon has given University of Missouri-Kansas Professor Carole P. McArthur, M.D., Ph.D., the Traditional Medicine Award. It recognizes her work over the last five years in merging the treatments of native healers with modern medicine as part of the fight against HIV/AIDS. Healers are now developing a local industry to package, distribute and sell traditional medicine products. McArthur recently discovered a new strain of HIV in Cameroon. Her discovery, published August 20, 2005, in the academic journal AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, has implications throughout the U.S. and world in terms of drug resistance, vaccine developments, HIV monitoring in patients. This major leap in evolution for HIV has unknown health consequences for HIV-positive people. CLEAVER YMCA OPENING The newest YMCA and the one closest to the Brush Creek Corridor, the Cleaver Family YMCA at 70th Street and Troost Avenue, will be open for business March 1. Prior to opening, the YMCA is holding a dedication ceremony Friday, February 24,at 9:30 a.m. at which community leaders will be present and Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, II will be speaking. The public is also invited to an Open House on Saturday, March 18 beginning at 9:00 a.m. Advisory Board Chair for the Cleaver YMCA Rob Givens said the facility’s location, on the west side of Troost Avenue, should help break down the street’s reputation as a divider in Kansas City. “This YMCA’s location can contribute to the physical and social health of the community,” said Givens. Givens is president and chief executive officer of Mazuma Credit Union and vice president of the Brush Creek Community Partners Board of Directors. Jesse Haynes, a former member of the Kansas City Chiefs and the Barcelona Dragons of the NFL Europe will be directing the new YMCA. ROCKHURST UNIVERSITY’S GREENLEASE GALLERY HOSTS “EXTREME EXTRA EXTRA LARGE” EXHIBIT ³WEM (As Above So Below),² 2005. Graphite on paper. 69 x 92 inches. California artist Michael Barton Miller examines how architectural spaces affect a culture through his body of work called “Extreme Extra Extra Large,” From February 24 through April 1 in the Greenlease Gallery on the Rockhurst University campus. Miller, associate professor of studio art at California State Polytechnic University – San Luis Obispo, approaches his art like an anthropologist by studying connections between cultural behavior and visual images. Greenlease Gallery is located between Van Ackeren and Sedgwick Halls on the campus, 54th Street and Troost Avenue. The exhibit will open with a Gallery Talk at 6:30 p.m. Friday, February 24, followed by a reception from 7 to 9 p.m. The gallery is free and open to the public from noon to 5 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. IVAHHOE NEIGHBORHOOD "GOING GREAT GUNS" In 2000, the Ivanhoe neighborhood came to the attention of people – not for its success – but because it had the highest crime rate in the city. Today, just six years later, community leaders, politicians and other neighborhoods are aware of a string of recent successes that distinguish Ivanhoe as one of the strongest neighborhoods in the city. As philanthropist and mortgage banker James B. Nutter, Sr. put it, “They are really going great guns.” In fact, the James B. Nutter & Company has been so impressed by the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council’s (INC) ability to turn things around it has taken a lead role in making one of the neighborhood’s dreams come true. Nutter Ivanhoe Neighborhood Center opens For years, neighborhood leaders tried to figure out how they could afford an estimated $440,000 needed to convert an abandoned fire station at 3700 Woodland into a neighborhood center. Nutter, who had worked with the neighborhood and stayed in touch with INC leadership, believed with donations of cash and materials they could really make the neighborhood center work. With the help of Nutter, Christmas in October, DST and other businesses that donated materials, the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council moved into its new home this February. The Nutter Ivanhoe Neighborhood Center will become a community meeting place. The neighborhood council will meet there and will expand its senior citizen and youth programs. Other community organizations will have space in the center, allowing increased collaboration among agencies working in the community. The police will have an office there. And residents will drop in to use the exercise equipment, the banks of computers, and to celebrate anniversaries and have parties. Margaret May, executive director of the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council, at home in the new Nutter Ivanhoe Center at 3700 Woodland. May is a member of the Brush Creek Community Partners Board of Directors. Ivanhoe Executive Director Margaret May said the neighborhood wanted the center for its own activities, but also to show other neighborhoods how to create a community anchor. “They persuaded us they would make good use of it for years to come,” said Nutter Company Vice President Eric Bushner. “And we were impressed with their plan to be a training ground for other neighborhoods” Bank of America Award helps keep progress going As much success as Ivanhoe is enjoying now, as recently as the end of last year May was wondering if the neighborhood council would have to close its office. The council previously had financial support from several philanthropic sources, but May said in late 2005, she had no idea how she would keep the doors open. Then help came. Bank of America gave Ivanhoe its Neighborhood Excellence Initiative award – a $200,000 grant over two years. The grant provides general operating support and leadership training. Clyde Wendel, president of the Kansas City Region of Bank of America, said the award honors individuals and organizations committed to building and strengthening Kansas City. Ivanhoe’s leaders celebrate the receipt of a $200,000 grant with its benefactors from Bank of America last November. Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council Executive Director Margaret May and INC President Alan Young (seventh and ninth from left) display the check. "When you look at all Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council has accomplished since its beginning and review its strategic plan for the future, it is clear that the Bank of America Neighborhood Builder Award has gone to a very deserving organization." said Wendel. "We anticipate more great things from Ivanhoe as the additional resources of this award are deployed." The grant will help keep the Ivanhoe Neighborhood Council office open, which May believes is essential in returning Ivanhoe to a vibrant area. “Part of the growth of the neighborhood is people getting to know one another,” she said. That happens when the neighborhood has an office whose doors are open, as Ivanhoe’s will be. Ivanhoe's vision coming to fruition Today, crime is down in Ivanhoe. Part of the reason is involvement. May said the neighborhood has 230 block captains who work with the Kansas City Police Department. People go to crime meetings, give the police their name and address and tell them what they have seen. The Ivanhoe Council is also seeing results of a strategic plan it developed in 2000. The city has adopted the plan, created by 150 citizens at a series of public meetings, as a vision for how Ivanhoe will grow. Later this year, the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) and Swope Community Builders (SCB) will start a tutoring program in Ivanhoe. SCB will donate two apartments in its Ivanhoe Garden apartments. Four UMKC students will move in, for free, in return for tutoring middle school kids and helping them see the possibilities of going to college. The neighborhood also is maintaining 200 land trust lots, abandoned by their owners. The neighborhood hopes to gain control of the lots, so that properties that once pulled their area down may produce revenue and new development. I feel like God has a plan for this neighborhood and I am a small piece,” May said. “Its like a big jigsaw puzzle. We're just beginning to see what it will look like.