Spencer Museum of Art

The Spencer Museum of Art has featured exhibits and events that focus on nature and the impact humans have on the natural environment. In June 2007, the museum hosted "Silent Spring/Silencing Rachel Carson," which included ecologically-inspired works and a viewing and discussion of the film Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

A current exhibit, Claimed: Land Use in Western America, features photographs, prints, and drawings that document aspects of westward expansion and development while emphasizing the notion that we treat nature as a commodity. In conjunction with the exhibit, the museum will host a panel discussion entitled "Images of the Plains: Culture, the Land, and its Uses," and screen two 1930's documentaries, The Plow that Broke the Plains and The River. The Plow focuses on the Great Plains and how, after settlers wiped out the Indians and buffalo who once inhabited the area, the great prosperity and progress that followed eventually left the land over-grazed and over-farmed, turning it into a parched, cracked Dust Bowl. The River details the remarkable growth of trade and travel along the Mississippi River, where the booming farming, lumber, iron, coal, and steel industries stripped the surrounding land of its soil and roots.

The museum hopes to continue with this theme of enviornmental impact through future exhibits. For more information about the Spencer Museum of Art, visit their website at www.spencerart.ku.edu.