Sallie Casey Thayer

Last updated
Sallie Casey Thayer
Born
Sallie Casey

(1856-02-14)February 14, 1856
DiedSeptember 10, 1925
San Diego, California
Known forArt collector
Notable work
Spencer Museum of Art
Spouse(s)William Bridges Thayer

Sallie Casey Thayer, née Casey (February 14, 1856 September 10, 1925) was a Kansas City art collector and advocate. Her diverse collection of fine and decorative art became the founding gift of the Spencer Museum of Art.

The Spencer Museum of Art is an art museum located on the University of Kansas campus in Lawrence, Kansas. The museum houses collection that currently numbers nearly 36,000 artworks and artifacts in all media. The collection spans the history of European and American art from ancient to contemporary, and includes broad holdings of East Asian art. Areas of special strength include medieval art; European and American paintings, sculpture and prints; photography; Japanese Edo period painting and prints; 20th-century Chinese painting; and KU’s ethnographic collection, which includes about 10,000 Native American, African, Latin American and Australian works.

Contents

Early life

Thayer was born in Covington, Kentucky and was a great-grandniece of US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall. After attending women's college in the 1870s, she married in 1880, merging her considerable social capital with that of prominent Kansas City merchant William Bridges Thayer (18521907). He would shortly become a partner in the Emery, Bird, Thayer Dry Goods Company. [1]

Covington, Kentucky City in Kentucky, United States

Covington is a city in Kenton County, Kentucky, United States, located at the confluence of the Ohio and Licking Rivers. Cincinnati, Ohio, lies to its north across the Ohio and Newport, Kentucky, to its east across the Licking. Part of the Cincinnati–Northern Kentucky metropolitan area, Covington had a population of 40,640 at the time of the 2010 U.S. census, making it the fifth-most populous city in Kentucky. It is one of its county's two seats, along with Independence.

John Marshall fourth Chief Justice of the United States

John James Marshall was an American politician who served as the fourth Chief Justice of the United States from 1801 to 1835. Marshall remains the longest-serving chief justice and fourth-longest serving justice in Supreme Court history, and he is widely regarded as one of the most influential justices to ever sit on the Supreme Court. Prior to joining the Supreme Court, Marshall served as the United States Secretary of State under President John Adams.

Emery, Bird, Thayer Dry Goods Company

Emery, Bird, Thayer & Company was a department store in Downtown Kansas City that traced its history nearly to the city's origins as Westport Landing.

Career

Acquisitive and catholic in her tastes, Sallie Casey Thayer amassed a collection of more than 7,500 objects over her lifetime, including more than 6,000 rare books, original artworks by Winslow Homer and Robert Henri, hundreds of Japanese prints, thousands of glass objects from virtually every era, antique textiles from four continents, Victorian valentines, snuff bottles, folk samplers, and quilts. Her collection was a trove of objects of almost every description, brought together "to encourage the study of fine arts in the Middle West". [1] [2] By 1914, the collection had grown to fill her home, and Thayer began actively advocating for the establishment of a permanent public art institution in the city—a dream she would ultimately abandon.

Winslow Homer 19th and 20th-century American painter and printmaker

Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in American art.

Robert Henri American painter

Robert Henri was an American painter and teacher. He was a leading figure of the Ashcan School of American realism and an organizer of the group known as "The Eight," a loose association of artists who protested the restrictive exhibition practices of the powerful, conservative National Academy of Design.

From 1914 to 1917, Thayer vocally criticized Kansas City's cultural environment, arguing that "although the city had come of age financially in the late 1800s, it had not addressed its need for libraries, educational facilities, and, most of all, museums." She called the new Union Station "hideously ugly", and she once decried the lack of women on the Board of Parks Commissioners, "for the men, as a rule, haven't much culture nor any well developed ideas on the subject of color aesthetics". [3]

In 1917, with the Nelson-Atkins Museum yet to be built—although enjoying earlier momentum and available funds in the region to establish an art institution—Thayer donated her collection to the University of Kansas in Lawrence. There, it found a home in the Helen F. Spencer Museum of Art. In 2016, the Spencer Museum is scheduled to mount an exhibition featuring the Thayer collection and highlighting her commitment to women and their role in civic affairs and municipal culture. [4]

University of Kansas public research university in Kansas, United States

The University of Kansas, also referred to as KU, is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, and several satellite campuses, research and educational centers, medical centers, and classes across the state of Kansas.. Two branch campuses are in the Kansas City metropolitan area on the Kansas side: the university's medical school and hospital in Kansas City, the Edwards Campus in Overland Park, and a hospital and research center in the state's capital of Topeka. There are also educational and research sites in Garden City, Hays, Leavenworth, Parsons, and Topeka, and branches of the medical school in Salina and Wichita. The university is one of the 62 members of the Association of American Universities.

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References

  1. 1 2 Harvey, Douglas. "Mrs. Thayer's Eclectic Collection". kuhistory.com. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  2. "K.U. Gets $150,000 gift". The Graduate Magazine of the University of Kansas. 15 (1): 292. October 1916. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  3. Coleman, Daniel. "William B. and Sallie Casey Thayer" (PDF). ThayerFamilies.com. Thayer Families Association. Retrieved 7 March 2015.[ permanent dead link ]
  4. "Civic Leader and Art Collector: Sallie Casey Thayer and an Art Museum for KU". spencerart.ku.edu. Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art. Retrieved 7 March 2015.