Steven Holl’s design for an extension of Kansas City’s Nelson Atkins Museum “initially seems to pay scant attention to the old building, and to be the opposite of everything that the classical vocabulary represents. But Holl has avoided the trap of honoring an older structure by closely echoing its architectural cues, a choice that would surely have resulted in a mass of masonry overwhelming a beautiful setting. Instead, the lightness and softness of his buildings, and their asymmetry, bestow on the classical museum a kind of perpetual gravitas, as well as ceding it pride of place.”