KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It's been more than two months since the new Kansas City International Airport terminal opened, but airport staff continue to work at the old terminal sites - putting items up for auction and identifying which mosaic medallions they want to save.
"We want to be responsible to try to to to save all the we can and not fill up landfills," said Joe McBride, senior manager of communications with KCI.
Over the past couple of weeks, the aviation department has been working with Purple Wave in placing furniture, fixtures, cabins, bars and signs on the popular auction site.
It comes as crews finalize plans to remove Mosaic medallions. The removal will be part of the department's demolition proposal which will be finalized this summer. McBride says there are 70 medallions within Terminals B and C and an art coordinator went through and evaluated each medallion and identified 40 medallions worth preserving that weren't damaged, duplicates, or non-mosaic. Medallions found in Terminal A were eventually re-purposed and implemented within the airport's new terminal.
"The challenge we have is those (medallions) are embedded in for 6-plus inches of concrete and they're hard to get out," McBride explained.
The medallions are part of the city's 1% for public art program and were made in Rome by creative team Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel. The duo worked on the "polarities" for four years with Italian artist Rinaldo Piras and terrazo company Corrandini.
"We spent a lot of time in Kansas City, and we spent a lot of time doing research about all the kind of visual references," Ginzel recalled.
It'll cost city aviation department approximately $1,000 to remove each medallion and it will be up to the Municipal Art Commission to determine their fate.
"Once we get them out where they go will later be determined, we're just going to get them out save them," McBride said.
For the team behind these medallions, the preservation efforts emphasize the importance of public art.
"Buildings can just be about, you know the the funding and the economics," Jones said. "But you know we're really invested in making something belong and become."
