Museum of Art will celebrate Mount Oread’s history and traditions by highlighting connections among the many memories that are spread across the KU landscape. Glorious to View—a name culled from the beloved KU Alma Mater song—will present an array of artworks and archival photographs to share the history of the KU campus, focusing on four historic sites: Spooner Hall, Fraser Hall, Old North College, and Potter Lake. The exhibition will be installed in the third floor hallway of the Spencer Museum and all objects, which will be drawn from the collections of both the Museum and the Spencer Research Library, are on display as reproductions so that they may be accessible to a variety of audiences outside of formal museum hours.
Glorious to View represents an innovative collaboration between Spencer Museum of Art staff and advanced KU graphic design students enrolled in a course taught by Professor Patrick Dooley. The project was developed by Spencer Museum curators Susan Earle and Nancy Mahaney, along with graduate student intern Chassica Kirchhoff, who also penned the texts. To design the four panels, 21 students engaged with photographs from the University Archives, artworks from the Spencer Museum of Art, and the histories of each of the four sites spotlighted in Glorious to View. The students worked closely with Spencer Museum graphic designer, Tristan Telander. Through this partnership, Glorious to View not only provided students with valuable experience, but also incorporated the voices of KU’s present and future into a project intended to showcase the University’s past.
The Spencer Museum of Art would like to acknowledge and thank the Historic Mount Oread Friends for their generous support of this exhibition. The goal of this important group is “to ensure that KU’s past is always part of its future.” Learn more about the Historical Mount Oread Friends here: http://union.ku.edu/hmof/