Spencer Museum of Art Informations

The Spencer Museum of Art is an art museum located on the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence, Kansas. The museum houses collection that currently numbers nearly 36,000 artworks and artifacts in all media. The collection spans the history of European and American art from ancient to contemporary, and includes broad holdings of East Asian art. Areas of special strength include medieval art; European and American paintings, sculpture and prints; photography; Japanese Edo period painting and prints; 20th-century Chinese painting; and KU’s ethnographic collection, which includes about 10,000 Native American, African, Latin American and Australian works.

In 1917 Sallie Casey Thayer, a Kansas City art collector, offered her collection of nearly 7,500 art objects to the University of Kansas to form a museum "to encourage the study of fine arts in the Middle West." Her eclectic collection included paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, furniture, rugs, textiles, metalwork, ceramics, glass, and other examples of decorative arts, primarily from Europe and Asia. Eventually the University of Kansas Museum of Art was established in 1928, based on this collection.

By the late 1960s the Museum had outgrown its quarters in Spooner Hall. Helen Foresman Spencer, another Kansas City collector and patron of the arts, made a gift of $4.6 million that funded construction of a new museum. The building housing the Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art, the Kress Foundation Department of Art History, and the Murphy Library of Art and Architecture opened in 1978. The neo-classical structure, built from Indiana limestone, was designed by Kansas City architect Robert E. Jenks, a 1926 graduate of KU.

In 2007, the Spencer Museum grew again when approximately 9,500 ethnographic collection objects from the former University of Kansas Museum of Anthropology were transferred to the Spencer Museum of Art. The collection includes a wide variety of cultural materials from all around the world, with a particular emphasis on American Indian materials. The collection is still housed in Spooner Hall and the storage space has been upgraded to include specially designed cabinets to house and protect the collection.

As of 2015, the Spencer Museum of Art is undergoing Phase I of a major renovation that will transform nearly 30,000 square feet of the building. Phase I will provide a complete renovation of the Museum’s entry lobby and central court, expand the teaching gallery, introduce a multi-use object study room, and expand storage and research facilities. Architects for the project are Pei Cobb Freed and Partners.

The Spencer Museum of Art sustains a diverse collection of art and works of cultural significance. It encourages interdisciplinary exploration at the intersections of art, ideas and experience. Among its collections are items from the estate of local literary icon William S. Burroughs, e.g., a Dreamachine fabricated by David Woodard. According to the Spencer Museum of Art's webpage, the museum strives to strengthen, support, and contribute to the academic research and teaching of the University of Kansas, and it is committed to serving communities of learners across Kansas and beyond.

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