Spencer Museum earns prestigious grant

The Spencer Museum of Art has earned a $1.2 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop the role the museum's art plays in teaching and research on campus.

The Mellon Foundation awarded the museum $1 million as a challenge grant, meaning the museum will have to match that amount within a three-year period to earn the full award.

"We're excited about what this represents for opportunities for the faculty and students at KU," says Bill Woodard, director of communications at the Spencer Museum of Art. "We're excited about the prospects for further embedding the Spencer's collections into what we're doing here on the Hill."

The grant will enable the museum to hire a director in a new position to develop relationships, bring in experts and researchers, and develop exhibits and new programs. The museum will do an international search for a director that can break down barriers by working with new technologies and social networking.

The grant will help the museum to create a live database on the Web for people around the world to visit, and will also allow the museum to embed its collection into academic teaching and learning all around campus.

"It's been a direction of the Mellon foundation to create a climate for university art museums in which they have a strong interdisciplinary connection with other departments," says Saralyn Reece Hardy, director of the Spencer Museum of Art.

Various academic departments at the University use the Spencer Museum's art collections for teaching and research. In the past year, more than 30 different departments have benefited from the museum's art for use in teaching and research.

The additional $200,000 that the museum received from the Foundation will go toward the search for someone to fill the new director position.

This is the fourth time since 1992 that the museum has received a grant from the Mellon Foundation. Other universities whose art museums received grants include Yale University, Duke University, the University of Chicago and the Rhode Island School of Design.