Three light installations are sharing the final two nights of Liberty’s Beacon at the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri. The free outdoor shows run Tuesday and Wednesday, Nov. 10 and 11, from 6 to 10:30 p.m. Central. Each starts on a quarter hour, with the last projection beginning at 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, Veterans Day, is the final night.
The museum expanded the schedule for the end of the run. Earlier dates featured individual artists. Now all three works rotate each evening, so visitors can see the full series in one trip. Each work runs eight to 10 minutes and has its own score. Allow at least three consecutive start times if you want to catch all three.
Three works on the memorial
The artists use three parts of the site: the Liberty Memorial Tower, the North Wall and the Great Frieze. From a distance, the tower is the easiest to see. The walls carry part of the composition, so where you stand changes how much of each work you can follow.
French video painter Xavier de Richemont’s An Hommage draws on the virtues commemorated at the memorial and the shared history of France and the United States during World War I. Leslie Epsztein and Camille Gross made Axis Mundi, which takes memory and its effect on the future as its subject. The Barcelona studio Onionlab’s Remember Forward takes the tower itself as a starting point. Local arts publication KC Studio covered the three works during the run, when visitors had to pick different dates to see them.
The building is part of the work. Rather than a single screen, the artists can use the tall vertical tower and the long horizontal frieze together. The museum commissioned the series for the memorial’s centennial and the country’s 250th anniversary. The pieces began running in September, and the final rotation brings them together through Veterans Day.
Where to stand and how to get there
The museum recommends the North Lawn for the full show. From there, visitors can see the wall and frieze as well as the tower and hear the music. The tower projections are also visible from many points north of the memorial. Those more distant spots can work for a short look, but the museum says some of the wall imagery and the score may be lost from there.
The official viewing guide maps the approaches. Free parking on the grounds is limited. The museum lists the U-Shaped Drive, the West Visitors Lot and Kessler Road, and says paid parking may be available around Union Station. The KC Streetcar’s WW1 Museum & Memorial stop offers another way in. Step-free routes from the stop, Kessler Road and the U-Shaped Drive take about five to 10 minutes on foot and include inclines. The museum is at 2 Memorial Drive.
What’s separate on Veterans Day
The projections are free to everyone and require no ticket. The museum’s indoor admission offer is separate. The Kansas City Royals Foundation is sponsoring free museum admission for veterans and active-duty service members through Wednesday. The museum’s Veterans Day schedule lists the daytime programs and admission details. The evening artwork is outdoors, so visitors who want both experiences should check the museum’s daytime hours before planning to arrive for the first projection. On Wednesday, the museum also opens The Words that Bind Us, a free exhibition in the lower-level lobby. Its centerpiece is one of 14 surviving copies from an official 1787 printing of the U.S. Constitution. The document remains on view through Memorial Day 2027.
People looking for a daytime observance elsewhere can find the national ceremony and regional sites in Edit USA’s Veterans Day coverage. For the Kansas City installation, the final start time is 10:30 p.m. Central on Wednesday.
