About a dozen artists, curators, and museum visitors stand at a long viewing table just inside the Spencer Museum of Art, at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. They’re huddled around a portfolio of prints by Minneapolis artist Jenny Schmid.
Groups of colorful, abstract works and several prints of rural scenes are neatly arranged around the room on a gallery rail, while large, black-and-white prints based on medical illustrations are spread across the table.
“I love how she used glitter,” says assistant professor of art history Emily Monty, leaning in to get a closer look. “It’s just interesting texturally, too, you know?”
Monty is here for what’s called “Open Friday,” a weekly affair when the museum makes all of its 27,000 prints, drawings and photographs available to visitors — by special request. It’s a chance to view art, up close and personal.
“It’s a really, actually a very special thing for a print room to do,” Monty says. “I often come in just to see what they’ve taken out of storage because I like to be surprised, and it’s a way for me to learn about the collection.”
The museum’s photography specialist, Luke Jordan, says students and professors may be their most frequent visitors, but Open Friday is open to anyone.
“You don't have to come with any kind of special knowledge or background,” Jordan said. “(Maybe) you just want to see what's there, and it's OK to come in and ask us questions.”
On this early September day, curators have set out a rare early work by the abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, a lithograph of a green and orange American flag by Jasper Johns, and a portrait of a cleaning woman by Fort Scott, Kansas, photographer Gordon Parks.
“For somebody who's really, really interested in studying a work, being able to see it close-up can really encourage a different kind of close looking,” Jordan says. “The space itself invites you to look closely.”
Karen Matheis, an oil painter who works in Lawrence, says seeing a print in-person expands her understanding of a work.
“Every time I come here there is something new to learn — either a new technique or a new artist,” Matheis says. “And because you're seeing it up close, you can see things that you can't see if you're online.”
The museum houses 48,000 objects of art, from across centuries, continents, cultures and mediums. All are searchable online, but Cara Nordengren, the works on paper intern, notes the collection includes 27,000 drawings and prints that curators can access within minutes.
“That level of access is really exciting, not just for scholars, but for people who maybe might feel intimidated to walk into an art museum,” she says.
Another benefit to making a trip in, Nordengren says, is that curators can help guide visitors.
“Maybe they have a really deep passion for some niche interest, and we can help connect them to artworks that we know we have in the collection, that maybe they were not familiar with,” she said. “We are here to kind of play matchmaker for people.”
Across the room, Kate Meyer, curator of works on paper, examines “Ode to Seed,” a delicate sketchbook made from handmade rice paper created by Kansas City artist Ke-Sook Lee, who died in April. Lee created the book in 2024, as she struggled with pancreatic cancer.
“So this is an artist's book,” Meyer explains as she carefully turns each page. “This is an artwork in book form — one of one — and it is handmade paper, fabric, stitching.”
The book tells the story of a seed that dreams to be born as a live plant. The acquisition is so new, Meyers says, it has not been added to their online database.
“There’s a lot of references to winter, then warming, growing, and bursting at the end,” Meyer says.
Helping visitors make connections to the art under her care is why Meyer loves Open Fridays, she says.
“A day like this is special because of who has come, and what they wanted to see,” Meyers says. “And the conversation that takes place between people and art, because the art is speaking, too. Just in a different way.”
Open Fridays at the Spencer Museum of Art are weekly, from 10 a.m to noon and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the Goddard Study Center, 1301 Mississippi St., Lawrence, Kansas 66045. For more information, go to SpencerArt.KU.edu.
