After fire destroyed Missouri's capitol in 1911, voters approved a bond issue to construct a new statehouse. The tax to pay the bonds produced a one-million-dollar surplus, leaving a vast amount of money to decorate the new building. A special commission of art-minded Missourians employed some of the nation's leading painters and sculptors to create powerful and often huge pieces of art to adorn Missouri's most important new structure. The art of the Missouri capitol was considered among the finest to adorn any state capitol. But the passage of time has lessened recognition of the pieces and their creators. Most people--even those daily wandering the marble halls--have little knowledge of the significance of the art and the history it portrays. Bob Priddy and Jeffrey Ball return the capitol's decorations to prominence in The Art of the Missouri Capitol: History in Canvas, Bronze, and Stone. The book tells the many stories behind the art: the rigors of its creation, the political roadblocks that endangered the decoration program, and the triumph of the commissioners who devoted more than ten years to the project. The Art of the Missouri Capitol presents the art in 270 images, many by Lloyd Grotjan, mostly of the building's many compelling paintings, murals, and sculptures. Priddy, a journalist who has covered the Missouri legislature for more than three decades, and Ball, an art historian, use a wealth of historical materials to connect the grand design of the capitol decorations with accounts of sometimes temperamental artists and meddling politicians. The authors provide historical and artistic context to explain the many surprising, controversial choices the artists made, and they use Missouri history to explain the tales depicted in the artwork, revealing the events--and inaccuracies--that the paintings bring to life. The authors honor the Missouri capitol's artistic excellence in a way that will appeal to art enthusiasts and history buffs as well as to general readers. The Art of the Missouri Capitol: History in Canvas, Bronze, and Stone is the definitive account of the art's creation, of the men who produced it, and of the Missourians who lived the history that inspired it.

"When as the Commission which built the Capitol was completing its labors, it was discovered that there was in the Capitol Tax Fund a surplus over and above what was required to complete the building and to pay principal and interest on the bonds which had been issued to secure funds for the erection of the Capitol, and when it was decided that this money could lawfully be used only upon the Capitol, the Forty-ninth General Assembly passed a law authorizing this Commission to proceed with the decoration of the Capitol"--Page 9.

Founded as a port at the confluence of two great rivers, Kansas City has the waters of the Missouri running through its bloodstream—threading expressways, delivering drinking water, carrying traffic and sewage, and emerging most visibly in the city’s celebrated fountains. Despite, or perhaps because of, the river’s ubiquity, the complex and critical nature of its presence can be hard to understand, which is precisely why Amahia Mallea’s enlightening book is so essential. Moving from the city’s center to the outer limits of the metropolitan area, A River in the City of Fountains offers a clear view of the reach and intricacies of the Missouri River’s connection to life in Kansas City. The history of this connection is one of science and industry working, sometimes at cross-purposes, to bend the river to the needs of commerce and public health. It is a story populated with heroes and villains, visionaries and robber barons, scientists and civil engineers, politicians and activists—all with schemes and plans and far-reaching ideas about what, and whose, demands the power of the Missouri should serve. And so, inevitably, it is a story of disparities: a story of, from one flood to the next, the haves staking out higher ground, leaving the have-nots to the perils of low-lying land. But what the book also shows us is a slow awakening to the ways in which all those vying for the river’s favor are inextricably connected by its course; here we see, finally, a growing awareness of the river’s essential role in the health and welfare of the whole urban environment. In the end, all citizens of Kansas City are both upstream and downstream; all are equally dependent on the health of the river. What this book helps us see is, at last, as much the city in the river as the river in the city.