The time I met Henry Moore

In April, 1976, I was in my first year of art school at the Kansas City Art Institute. One fine spring day, two of my art school friends and I decided to go hang out on the grounds of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (which is right next door to the Art Institute).

As we were sitting and relaxing in the warm sun, we noticed a group of people slowly walking towards us from the far-end of the museum grounds. It was an old guy, a woman, and several people hovering around them. After a while, they just happened to walk right by us. The old guy greeted us warmly and even petted my dog (my friends and I are sitting on the park bench in the background of the bottom photo, below). Then they continued on their way and went into the museum, and we quickly forgot about it.

The next morning, I was reading the newspaper, and came across the following article.

To say my friends and I were upset that we met Mr. Moore, who was widely considered to be the greatest living sculptor in the world at the time, and didn’t realize it, is a huge understatement. To this day, I wish we had known. Not only do I LOVE Henry Moore’s work, he was also the inspiration for me when I created my marble sculpture Animas, back in the early 2000’s.

I want to thank Joe Kitchen with the Henry Moore Foundation for helping me acquire a copy of the newspaper article 49 years after the fact.