Arts Research Collaboration

Launched in October 2012 and led by Spencer Museum of Art Director Saralyn Reece Hardy and Senior Curator Stephen Goddard, the Arts Research Collaboration (ARC) fostered relationships among the arts, sciences and technology at KU. The project was supported by a three-year, $276,000 grant from the KU Research Investment Council through its Level 1 strategic investment grant program. By leading and facilitating interdisciplinary artistic inquiry and building new networks for collaborative work, ARC created a broad foundation for a future of collaborative research that explores our rapidly changing world.

Project Highlights

Four people with string on the floor of The Commons

Hybrid Practices

From March 10–13, 2015, the Spencer Museum hosted a free international conference tracing the trajectory of collaborative arts-science-technology research during the past 50 years. The conference incorporated papers and keynote speakers, as well as performative and creative projects grounded in hybrid arts-science research.

Creative Specialist-in-Residence: João Fiadeiro

In February 2015, Portuguese choreographer and researcher João Fiadeiro visited the Spencer as a Creative Specialist to conduct research, workshops, and performances with KU faculty and students. His work, which focuses on process rather than product and explores movement as a tool to understand decision-making, culminated in a performance at The Commons.

CERN Roundtable—Excavating the Universe: Physics Interacts with the Arts

In November 2014, ARC organized a roundtable discussion with international artists and scientists, including representatives from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), to discuss how their disciplines stimulated and inspired one another.

art+science: Collaborative research at the University of Kansas

The Spencer Museum partnered with the University of Kansas Libraries to host the exhibition art+science: Collaborative Research at the University of Kansas, which showcased ARC and its investigations of collaborative research. The exhibition, which was on view in the Watson Library Gallery from September 2014 through January 2015, revealed how fine arts practices have long played an instrumental role in interdisciplinary research.