Spencer Museum of Art announces success of $2 million challenge grant to support its Arts Research Integration Program

LAWRENCE — The Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas today announced the completion of a $2 million challenge grant for its Arts Research Integration (ARI) initiative, bringing total fundraising to endow and fund this visionary program to $5 million. The Spencer Museum first launched ARI in 2016 with a four-year grant from the Mellon Foundation and quickly established it as an innovative model to integrate artists and creative practices into a wide range of research processes through collaborative projects.

In 2022, the museum received an important $3 million endowed gift from Kansas City-based philanthropist and arts advocate Margaret H. Silva in recognition of ARI’s groundbreaking approach to centering the arts within interdisciplinary study. Silva also generously committed to a challenge grant, led by the Spencer, for up to an additional million dollars of financial support for the program. 

The success of the challenge grant is the result of the dedication of nearly two dozen donors, with major contributions from J. Scott Francis, Francis Family Foundation; Mrs. Ingrid T. Lee; The Estelle S. and Robert A. Long Ellis Foundation; Dee and Mike Michaelis; and KU, as well as gifts of varying scale from across the university and museum communities. It is a testament to a shared belief in ARI’s essential work and to the power of engaging giving at every level as important and meaningful. 

“We are immensely grateful to the generosity and commitment of Margaret H. Silva and the many donors who made the completion of this essential challenge grant possible,” said Saralyn Reece Hardy, the Spencer’s Marilyn Stokstad Director. “ARI represents our belief in the ability of art and creativity to open our minds to new ways of thinking, problem-solving and creating our future. The $5 million in funds ensures that we can continue to activate the core role of art in research practices — work that seems ever more urgent as we reach for solutions to our communities’ challenges and develop new opportunities.”

Since its inception, ARI has allowed the Spencer to actively embed artists in research processes happening at KU, enhancing the university’s research ecology and public understanding of timely and relevant topics. Public engagement is essential to ARI as a means of knowledge sharing and encouraging greater community involvement. Among the recent projects completed through ARI is a collaboration between artist Janine Antoni and researchers at the KU Field Station at the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research that engaged with biological and cultural questions relating to the preservation of the prairie ecosystem, one of the most diverse and endangered ecosystems outside of the rainforest and one that has nearly disappeared across the United States. Another project brought together artist Janet Biggs, then KU mathematician Agnieszka Międlar and KU physicist Daniel Tapia Takaki, who also leads a team at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, to explore high-energy physics and applied novel mathematical techniques. 

The funds will support ongoing and new projects with artists and researchers, including the upcoming collaboration with artist Ayomi Yoshida; fellowship opportunities for KU faculty and students; a multiyear project collaboration among the museum, artists Stephanie Dinkins and Simon Denny, and KU’s Institute for Information Sciences, led by KU faculty member Perry Alexander; and the position of curator for research, which oversees the ARI work within the Spencer. The museum is currently searching for its next curator for research, who will guide the creative program and future innovation for ARI and serve as an important voice in the fields of the arts, humanities, sciences, and technology. The national search to fill the position is currently underway.

More About Arts Research Integration (ARI)

With Arts Research Integration (ARI), the Spencer Museum of Art at KU has established an active hub for collaborative, integrated arts research and a unique model for the academic art museum as a generative research partner. Using curatorial and artistic practice to develop shared questions and new theories, ARI connects the museum, artists and advanced researchers in the sciences and humanities to promote interdisciplinary practices, generate effective dialogues about subjects that directly impact daily life, and involve the public in ideas and art. The ARI program recognizes that the creation of art is a research methodology in its own right and one that is critical to the future of research in an academic environment. Research generated by the ARI program fosters reciprocal exchange and the production of knowledge driven by scholars from multiple disciplines. By working beyond the confines of any one discipline, scholars, artists and curators can practice fluency and criticality in the context of their own subjects.

About the Spencer Museum of Art

The Spencer Museum of Art, located on the KU Lawrence campus, explores the intersection of art, ideas and experiences. With a diverse collection of more than 48,000 works, the Spencer is the only museum in Kansas with contemporary and historic artwork in all mediums from cultures across six continents. The Spencer Museum facilitates arts engagement and research through exhibitions, artist commissions and residencies, conferences, performances, lectures, children’s art activities, and arts and culture festivals. Admission to the Spencer Museum of Art is free.