Research Interests

• American art and material culture
• environmental Studies
• Kansas

Significant & Ongoing Projects

Kate Meyer joined the professional staff of the Spencer Museum of Art in 2004 as a curatorial assistant. In 2011 she became part of the University’s academic staff as an assistant curator of works on paper. Meyer collaborates with faculty, staff, students, and the public across disciplines to integrate the visual arts into the teaching and research mission of the University by facilitating educational access to the Study Room. Her responsibilities include managing the Walk-ins Welcome Fridays program and overseeing the Museum’s Teaching Gallery. In 2011, Meyer completed her doctorate at the University of Kansas in American art history with her dissertation, Broken Ground: Plowing and America’s Cultural Landscape in the 1930s. This study of art related to the Dust Bowl evinces Meyer’s research interests in art and its intersections with environmental and agricultural themes—interests that have manifested themselves in the form of exhibitions such as 1 Kansas Farmer (2013), Climate Change at the Poles (2009), and Claimed: Land Use in Western America (2007). Meyer’s exploration of environmental art history led to her participate as an academic fellow in the National Science Foundation’s project, Biofuels and Climate Change: Farmer’s Land Use Decisions. She served as the logistical coordinator to project leader Kris Ercums on Project Redefine, a reinstallation of the Spencer’s permanent collection galleries resulting in long-term, thematic exhibitions: Empire of Things (2012), Forms of Thought (2014), and This Land (2014). Meyer recently collaborated with Cassandra Mesick and Celka Straughn to curate the thematic exhibition The Object Speaks.