But how do I know that? Because I first saw that second clip decades ago, when he was still alive, before his voice could be faked. Before his image and video of him could be faked. However, now all that can be readily simulated, and the creators of the newer clip admit in the fine print that the narration is fake.
These days we must approach anything unfamiliar with skepticism — ANYTHING and ANYONE. Not just Feynman, but every person for whom there are sufficient audio recordings and photographic imagery…and that includes quite obscure figures like myself.
Years ago I demonstrated on Facebook how my voice could be simulated. Now a single image of me can be manipulated into infinite forms that continue to become more and more realistic. That is one reason that when a meme circulated of women creating a Christmas photo using an AI prompt on a single uploaded self-portrait, I chose to create and share a couple of silly AI Christmas photos that hundreds of my Facebook friends laughed at with me.
In December 2025, an AI prompt could easily transform my photograph as shown
But our laughter echoes in a shared world where typical evidence is becoming as uncertain, as misleading, as the typical false conceptions of matter and space. Skepticism is now required, but that brings with it the erosion of trust.
For decades we have stressed the importance of critical thinking skills, but social media continually reveals how uncritical and unintelligent many of us must inevitably remain, splayed out across the statistical bell curves of ability. The suckers continue to be born every minute.
Young and old fail to distinguish artificial intelligence hallucinations from established truths. Scientific evidence and rigorous research are discounted, misinterpreted, defunded, and demeaned by influential media and government figures, motivated by their personal politics and biases, who lack earned credentials or credibility. But to many that will not matter, for their trust in institutions and expertise has been steadily eaten away, replaced with blind beliefs built by partisanship, culture wars, and demagoguery.
We live in an age that is both wondrous and tragic. It will require time, effort, and patient perseverance for our cultural norms and institutions to adjust to our new capabilities, with no guarantees of success, only continued challenges.
I do not despair, for there is much utility in the new technologies, much potential to better inform and perform. Our quality of life need not collapse amidst wrenching change if enough of us heed the call to help each other cope. However, we must recognize that our shared reality, already misunderstood by most, continues to shatter. It is up to us to decide if we are to act as hammer or glue.
Our stay in Lawrence during Thanksgiving Break 2025 allowed me to explore some family history, since my father was a KU Jayhawk in the late 1940s. Dad had completed a freshman year of studies at Independence Junior College before being inducted into the U.S. Army in August 1943 at Ft. Leavenworth. He had been born blind in one eye, but he still managed to qualify for a marksmanship badge, and Dad served as a military policeman in Denver and then set up water purification plants as part of an engineering battalion in Germany and later the Philippines. He was honorably discharged in April 1946 and moved back home to Independence, Kansas.
In September 1946, Dad enrolled at KU to study engineering, funded by the G.I. Bill, which he recalled as paying some toward his tuition and books and providing a monthly stipend. Dad hitched a ride for the 140-mile trip to Lawrence, where he enrolled in chemical engineering.
Car Trouble
1929 Model A
Dad lived in a boarding house during that sophomore year and quickly realized he would need a car. He bought a 1930 black Chevy coupe, figuring out that its stalling was caused by a silk rag that had fallen into the gas tank. When a valve shot through the engine block, Dad had a shadetree mechanic replace it and braze shut the hole for $35. He drove the problematic vehicle down to Independence, borrowed $435 from his father, and bought a black 1929 Model A coupe with cream-colored wire wheels. Although his second car was a year older, it was far more reliable.
[created using Google Gemini]
Dad recalled how the streets leading from downtown Lawrence to the university campus would become quite icy, and once while driving up Mt. Oread the car did a 180-degree about face and he went back down the hill, thankfully with no damage. I had a similar incident forty years later while driving on icy US 77 into Norman on my way to the University of Oklahoma. My rear-wheel drive 1981 Toyota Celica Supra suddenly began a complete 360-degree spin. I followed the advice from driver’s education, turning into the skid and pumping the brakes, only to arrive back in place in my lane, again facing forward. Motorists around me had paused, their faces frozen in alarm, but there were no impacts, and I too was able to proceed with no damage. I was lucky, and I stuck with the decision I made that morning that every subsequent car I bought would feature front-wheel drive.
Apartment Living in Lawrence
Dad got married in December 1946 to his first wife. They found their first apartment, a furnished one with a few steps up to an entryway and a few steps down to a bathroom. However, when they turned on the water for the kitchen sink, there was an odd sound as it drained. They opened the cabinet to find the sink drained into a bucket, which had to be carried out the front door, down the steps to the sidewalk, down more steps to the basement bathroom, and then dumped.
Needless to say, they looked for better accommodations. Downtown, just across the alley from the back wall of the Granada Theater, was a two-story red brick building that had once been a carriage house on the alley behind a house that had been reduced to just a foundation. The carriage house was split into four apartments, with the landlady in the front downstairs. Dad and his bride rented an upstairs unit, which was reached by a wooden stairway from the alley up to an enclosed landing, which had an ice box with two doors to the two upstairs apartments, which shared the ice box and a common bathroom.
My father once lived in a carriage house behind the Granada theater in Lawrence
One incident my father recalled was when he smelled smoke coming from down below. He realized it was coming from the landlady’s apartment. Banging the door yielded no response, but Dad knew she kept a hideout key in a small shed at the front of the house. He got the key, opened the door, and discovered a pan had been left on a lighted burner on the gas stove and had burned dry its contents. Thankfully the fire had not spread, so he turned off the burner, aired the house out, left a note, locked the door, and replaced the key.
When the landlady returned, “Here she came, not to thank me for saving her home but to ask me how I knew she had a hideout key in the shed out front. I don’t remember how I knew, but I had probably observed her retrieving it at some time. Bless her heart!”
The carriage house is long gone
While Wendy and I were in Lawrence, I checked the alleyway behind the Granada Theater. I could see the theater’s back wall against the alley, as my father had described. However, there was just an empty parking lot beyond. The carriage house, like the main home it had been built for, was long gone.
After completing his sophomore year, Dad switched to studying petroleum engineering. He managed to complete the degree in his three years at KU, graduating in the spring of 1949. Dad would spend 35 years in the petroleum industry, catching peak years of oil and gas activity.
Dad’s College Jobs
To make ends meet, Dad took several part-time jobs to supplement his G.I. stipend, including sanding the floors at one of the Lawrence school gymnasiums.
Dad later wrote:
My best job, and one I kept from year to year, was presser of alterations at Oberʹs Menʹs Shop, the swankiest menʹs shop in downtown Lawrence. There was a balcony affair above and at the back of the store which served as an alterations and pressing room. Up there, high above the sales floor, a little lady seamstress did all the alterations of suits, pants, jackets, etc. sold in the store. After she was through with a garment she would hang it up to be pressed. I would come in and steam press the alterations she had done on a given day, or come in on Saturday and press all she had done over a period of a few days.
I was paid 43¢ an hour and was given a ten or fifteen percent discount on anything that I purchased from the store. I donʹt remember the exact percentage because I was never able to afford anything that they had for sale, not even a necktie. I recall being up there every Saturday afternoon pressing away and wishing I was out watching KUʹs home football games. All the time that I was at KU the University of Oklahoma team always beat our Kansas team. I contended that the reason the Oklahoma Sooners always beat our Jayhawkers was that they had their own football to practice with.
Henry “Bert” Buell Ober had purchased the store from Abe Levy way back in 1896. By the time my father worked there, Ober’s had downsized into the southern part of its building, and eventually the upstairs area was used to sell Boy Scouts apparel. I was unable to determine when the store closed, but in the 1980s or 1990s the south part of the building was “modernized” with a hideous new façade, causing the building to be designated as “non-contributing” in the historic downtown’s listings in the National Register of Historic Places. Thankfully, sometime between 2019-2021 the original brick design was restored. I was gratified that anything recognizable remained in downtown Lawrence that my father had mentioned from his time there over three-quarters of a century earlier.
The former Ober’s in 1993, 2007, and 2024
Back to B’ville
On our third day in Lawrence, we packed up and drove over the west side of town for breakfast at The Big Biscuit. Then we drove south on US 59 to Ottawa. We could have taken Interstate 35 southwest to US 75, which leads through Bartlesville 130 miles to the south.
However, I wasn’t in the mood for that, and opted to divert around the western edge of Ottawa and take Old Highway 50 to US 75.
What would have been a 28-mile 24-minute drive thus became a 29-mile 34-minute drive along a nearly deserted highway through the little towns of Homewood, Williamsburg, and Agricola.
Charles Kuralt did On the Road segments across a million miles for a quarter-century, riding in a motor home with a small crew, avoiding interstates in favor of the nation’s back roads in search of America’s people and their doings. I’d catch one from time to time on CBS. Kuralt once remarked, “Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.”
I enjoyed that mild detour, but soon we were on familiar US 75. After I moved to Bartlesville and first began traveling to Kansas City, I took 75, but it was so deadly dull that I switched to US 169, which is mildly, quite mildly, more interesting. We could have driven south from Ottawa to catch 169 at Garnett. Rather than repeat ourselves, however, I stuck with 75 through Burlington, Yates Center, past Buffalo and Altoona, turning to track through Neodesha.
US 75 briefly merges with US 400 south of there, and I often miss the turnoff where 75 resumes its dedicated track past Sycamore. Sure enough, I missed the turnoff again, having to make a U-turn to try again. Then we zipped through Independence, familiar to me from many childhood visits with relatives there. Having shamed myself at missing the earlier turnoff, I sought redemption by bypassing town via a diversion west on Taylor Road to then turn south on Peter Pan and then rejoining 75.
Peter Pan & Braums
As a kid, I was amused that a section road near Independence was named Peter Pan. It was named for one of the Peter Pan Ice Cream Stores. In 1933, Henry H. Braum started a butter processing plant in Emporia, and in 1952 one of his sons, Bill, developed a chain of retail ice cream stores across Kansas.
One of the old Peter Pan Ice Cream Stores, started by Bill Braum
In 1967, the 61 Peter Pan Ice Cream Stores were sold off, but the sale did not include the Braum Dairy or its processing plant. The sale terms forbade the Braums from selling ice cream in Kansas for a decade, and Bill moved the business to Oklahoma City. The first Braum’s Ice Cream & Dairy Store opened in 1968 a few blocks from where I lived from 1978 to 1984. Now the family owns and operates over 300 stores across Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas. The Peter Pan store in Independence is long gone, but they do have a Braum’s!
But why did Bill Braum call his first stores Peter Pan? Well, in Emporia there is a Peter Pan Park. It originated when a young girl, Mary White, died of injuries from a horse-back ride. Her father wrote an editorial about her life and funeral, and referred to his daughter as a “Peter Pan” girl who did not want to grow up. The article yielded contributions to the family, which they used to build a park.
Peter Pan Park in Emporia, Kansas
Little House on the Prairie
Just 11 miles southwest of Peter Pan Road in Independence, just a mile off US 75, is the site of the actual Little House on the Prairie, where Laura Ingalls lived in 1869-1870. Laura’s father had moved the family there from Wisconsin, thinking that the Kansas area would soon be up for settlement. However, their homestead was on the Osage Indian reservation, and they returned to Wisconsin.
Little House on the Prairie is the third book in the series of eight novels that Laura Ingalls Wilder published from 1932 to 1943. The first one will enter the public domain in 2027, and the third in 2030.
The Little House on the Prairie near Independence
There is a museum on the property, open Thursdays-Saturdays from March through October. It has a replica of the Ingalls family cabin, an old post office, and a one-room schoolhouse. However, we’ve been there, done that, and anyways, the museum isn’t open in November. So we continued on south through Caney, Copan, and Dewey to return home.
We enjoyed visiting Lawrence, and I expect that Wendy and I might do a similar trip someday, visiting Kansas City and staying overnight at the TownePlace Suites by Marriott in downtown Lawrence. However, I think we’ll again want to time that to match up with a holiday break…we aren’t college kids anymore, by a long shot.
Jabez Bunting Watkins was born in 1845 near Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, about forty years before its Groundhog Day celebrations commenced. He had humble beginnings, studying law and settling in Lawrence, Kansas in 1873, where he established a land mortgage firm connecting eastern investors with Kansas farmers needing loans.
Jabez Watkins
He developed an empire, owning more than 300,000 acres in Kansas and 1,500,000 in Louisiana. He organized the Merchants National Bank in Lawrence in 1876, and a decade later work began on a new headquarters for his business ventures.
The imposing red brick building was Richardsonian Romanesque, with a limestone entry arch and profuse ornamentation achieved via terra cotta borders between the floors, decorative turrets at the corners, and window ornaments.
The main entrance features a grand stair which ascends to a second floor that was Watkins National Bank and a third floor for his land mortgage company, with a mezzanine between that floor and the attic for company employees. Beautiful decorative paneling and door and window frames were ash on the ground floor, white oak on the second, and curly yellow pine on the third. Watkins spared no expense in outfitting his HQ, including multiple vaults and expensive custom furnishings. The building had ventilation chases and was plumbed for gas lighting but also wired for electricity to take advantage of the hydroelectric dynamos at the Kansas River dam.
Watkins died at his home in Lawrence in 1921, and the bank closed in 1929. His widow gave the building for use as City Hall, which remained until 1970, when the Douglass County Historical Society acquired the building and began restorations. The Elizabeth M. Watkins Community Museum opened in 1975.
Wendy and I walked in the main entrance, finding ourselves on a landing of a large stairwell. The landing was large enough that to one side, seated at a desk, was a lady who welcomed us and outlined the building’s layout.
We ascended to the banking floor, struck by the beautiful stained glass windows on the stairs leading up to mortgages. They are original to the 1888 building and were recently restored.
You couldn’t miss the original function of the floor we entered, as BANK was spelled out in a lovely floor mosaic.
Wendy’s and my eyes bugged out to see the Jim Crow era sheet music on display from 1897. It was striking that when George and Bert did their black minstrel shows, George was a “dandy” who performed without makeup. Bert had fair skin, giving him easier access to the white vaudeville scene.
The two billed themselves as “The Two Real Coons” since many vaudeville minstrels were whites painted in blackface. At first, the lighter-skinned Bert would trick the darker Walker in their skits. With lighter skin expressing some European ancestry, and a fine voice, by the expectations of the time Williams would have performed as the “straight man” in comedy routines. Williams was very talented, and he played all instruments very well. Walker had darker skin, and was a great comedian and dancer. He would be expected to play the fool.
However, they discovered that audiences found them much funnier when they subverted the stereotypes and played against their appearances. Williams applied the burnt cork to his face to become a black man in blackface, while Walker performed without any makeup, dressing a little too high-style and spending all the money he could borrow or trick out of the lazy, carefless, and unlucky character Williams portrayed.
There was a photograph of George and his beautiful wife, Ada, who was “The Queen of the Cake Walk” and later also became a choreographer. Here is an example of a Cake Walk.
Sadly, in 1909 Walker began to stutter and suffer memory loss due to syphilis. He died in early 1911, at age 37 or 38, in a sanitarium on Long Island, and he was buried in Lawrence. Ada died suddenly of kidney failure in 1914 at age 34.
Bert Williams
As for Bert Williams, back in 1910, Booker T. Washington had written of him: “He has done more for our race than I have. He has smiled his way into people’s hearts; I have been obliged to fight my way.”
Walker’s death made it a struggle for Williams to keep their company operating, and he was approached by Florenz Ziegfield to perform in his famous Follies. Williams agreed and signed a three-year contract. The white actors threatened to walk out because they did not want competition from a black actor, but they changed their minds when Ziegfeld said he could replace any of them except for Williams, because he was unique and talented. After his contract was up, Williams performed for another three years with the Follies because of his success.
However, his career lagged after his final Follies appearance in 1919, and his final years were marred by chronic depression, alcoholism, and insomnia. He died in 1922 at age 47. A private funeral service held at a Masonic Lodge in Manhattan broke a color barrier, being the first Black American to be so honored by the all-white Grand Lodge. When the doors were opened for a public service, nearly 2,000 mourners of both races were admitted.
Other Exhibits
I liked a Life in Early Lawrence exhibit that Abby Magariel, who was the museum’s education and programs coordinator from 2011 to 2019, had unveiled a decade earlier.
The architecture of the old building fascinated me, including its five sliding banks of shutters for the large windows, some of which are a whopping 12 feet tall.
We ascended the beautiful stairway to the upper floor, which re-opened in 2022 after an eight-year remodeling project.
A prime display there was a Milburn Light Electric Car from the early 1900s. Its only customary owner had been Eleanor Henley, who drove it around downtown Lawrence in the 1920s. It was restored in 1973.
The woodwork continued to impress.
One of the more unusual items was a sculpture of shoe soles. Lloyd Burgert had asked his customers to sign the worn soles he removed, and he assembled that piece of folk art in the late 20th century.
After completing our tours of the second and third floors, we took an elevator to the lowest floor, which appeared to be used as meeting and research space, and I enjoyed seeing an old fuse box preserved in the men’s bathroom.
We returned to the entrance, and I was glad to find they had a booklet by Jack Newcomb with the story of the Watkins building. The docent said it was $5, so I pulled out a $20. She confessed she did not have change, and I said that was no bother, that we had enjoyed the free museum so much that the remainder should be considered a donation.
Unbeknownst to us, Steve Nowak, the museum’s Executive Director, was on the stairway above us. He greeted us, identified himself, and shared that witnessing that sort of spontaneous moment warmed his heart. I am truly grateful to all of the past and present staff of the museum and its board members for their successful efforts to curate such a beautiful, interesting, and happily diverse experience. If you are ever in Lawrence, I highly recommend stopping in at the Watkins.
After enjoying the Spencer Museum of Art, Wendy and I returned to the TownePlace Suites to reset before heading out to lunch. We again took advantage of its location just east of the Massachusetts Avenue strip to go find lunch. On our walk, a couple of structures caught my attention.
A Phillips 66 Cottage Station
Just south of the hotel, on the southeast corner of 10th & New Hampshire, was a ceramics store. If its shield sign wasn’t enough of a giveaway that it had once been a Phillips 66 gasoline station, the store was in one of the telltale cottage-style buildings that date back to almost a century ago.
Phillips built over 500 of the structures across the mid-section of the country from the late 1920s through the 1930s.
Back in 2018, at a roadsite architecture and attractions forum in Tulsa, Mike Kertok provided a half-hour overview of the cottage stations, showing that many other petroleum companies also made use of the style, and I appreciated his fun categorization of 66 of the surviving stations. His work is also available in text form.
Kertok’s roll call was impressive, given that less than 100 of the old Phillips 66 cottage buildings have survived. Woolaroc Museum has a cottage that was never actually a gasoline outlet, but instead served as Bartlesville’s airport office for several years and was donated to the museum in 2015. It has been renovated to show what a little cottage gas station was like a century ago.
Many of the cottage stations were tiny, making them difficult to repurpose. However, Cramers Phillips 66 in Lawrence, built in 1928, had one garage bay, increasing its adaptability.
A Former Masonic Temple
Another building that caught my eye was the town’s old Masonic Temple, a 1910 building in the Egyptian Revival style. The three-story 14,197 square foot former temple was for sale, with a list price of $1.15 million or leasing at a bit over $7,000 per month.
It retains tin ceilings, wood floors, and marble accents, and I was glad to find an interior virtual tour.
Like many Christian churches in the old mainline denominations, many fraternal organizations are having to sell off facilities that are too much for their declining memberships. The fraternal organizations have been weakening for decades, as documented back in 2000 by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone.
That process has accelerated throughout the digital age as the developing internet and social media offered virtual connections that made in-person lodge meetings less attractive. The Covid-19 pandemic was another powerful accelerant in their decline.
Another factor is that a century ago the fraternal organizations had an important function of serving as a social safety net, but the New Deal reforms made those supports less vital.
At their peak, it has been estimated that as much as 40% of the adult male population held membership in at least one fraternal order. In Bartlesville there were Knights of Columbus, Knights of Pythias, Knights Templar, Woodmen of the World, Odd Fellows, Freemasons, and Patrons of Husbandry, along with a menagerie of Eagles, Elks, Lions, Owls, and Moose. Then there was a much longer list of various civic organizations. A few chapters and lodges endure, but many are long gone.
There were once over four million Masons in the USA, about 4.5% of all American men. However, in 2024, the Masonic Service Association of North America reported 869,429 members under their associated Grand Lodges, a drop of over 75% from their peak, even as the country’s population expanded significantly.
Rebuilding
A month after our visit, an image on the internet captured my attention. It showed the huge football stadium we had driven by during our visit half-destroyed.
Not being sports fans, Wendy and I had been unaware that the stadium was part-way through a complete rebuild. The west stands had already been demolished and rebuilt before our visit, and the east stands were brought down in December 2025.
Memorial Stadium was built in 1920 with only east and west bleachers, which expanded southward in 1925. A north bowl was added in 1927, and the west bleachers were expanded upward in 1963 and the east ones in 1965. The rebuild will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, with KU alumnus David G. Booth kicking the project off with a $50 million donation that resulted in the stadium being renamed in his honor. Booth later donated another $300 million to KU.
Latchkey Deli
We walked down Mass to a 1910 two-story brick building to have lunch at the Latchkey Deli. There were no tables left in the tiny restaurant, but the weather had improved so that we were able to just take our trays out front to eat at the streetside counter. I recommend their delicious mac & cheese for a side. I had a cherry Italian soda that once again reminded me why I find those confections more fun to look at than to consume.
We then walked past a little Japanese Friendship Garden, established in 2000, to tour the Watkins Museum of History, which will be the subject of the next post.
Sallie Casey Thayer of Kansas City amassed over 6,000 rare books, original artworks by Winslow Homer and Robert Henri, hundreds of Japanese prints, thousands of glass objects from across the eras, antique textiles from four continents, Victorian valentines, snuff bottles, folks samplers, and quilts. She said her purpose in collecting was “to encourage the study of fine arts in the Middle West”.
It took several years for the university to provide space for the collection in Spooner Hall, and by the 1960s, it had outgrown that space. In 1978, another Kansas City collector, Helen Foresman Spencer, made a substantial gift to fund the construction of a new space, built of Indiana limestone and designed by KU alum Robert E. Jenks. Her husband, Kenneth, was a coal mine owner who transformed a government surplus factory into the world’s largest producer of ammonium nitrate, and had died in 1960. She would eventually donate over $18 million to cultural institutions in the Middle West.
Spooner Hall in 1927Spencer Museum of Art in 1978
The Spencer Museum of Art was renovated from 2015 to 2022, and we found it to be a functional and easily navigated facility with an eclectic collection that was, pardon my phrasing, artfully displayed. The Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City remains my favorite, with its stunning old architecture and courtyard cafe, while the Spencer’s unobtrusive architecture and renovated galleries kept me focused on its collection, with about 1,300 art objects displayed on a typical day, with about 37,000 more items in storage.
Parking was simple
Wendy and I awoke at the TownePlace Suites by Marriott in Lawrence, enjoying a complimentary hot breakfast downstairs that was carefully tended by a hardworking lady. Then we took the elevator down to the parking garage and drove the minivan a half-mile west to Mississippi Street, turning south to pass by the big football stadium and park in the Mississippi Street Garage. There are free spaces there for museum visitors, with us simply having to register our vehicle at the reception desk at the museum, which is always free of charge.
The Carillon & Campanile are on the hillside west of the museum
The galleries are on the third and fourth floors, and the main entrance is on the third. Can you tell that KU is built on hills? In nicer weather, I would have enjoyed exiting the museum’s west side for a walk in the Marvin Grove, with the Memorial Carillon and Campanile, but the season didn’t suit.
One of the first pieces that caught my eye was the glass Eagle Hat by Preston Singletary, nicely lit to display its design in its shadow. His art reflects Tlingit culture.
A Shipwreck by Philip James De Loutherbourg was an oil from around 1770. His paintings of such dramatic scenes established his career in France, but he is best remembered for elaborate stage designs he did later in England.
Two Boys Looking by Jim Dine was recognizable to me, having seen a painted version of one of his wooden Pinnochios, Walking to Borås back in 2012 at Crystal Bridges.
It was interesting how Dine chose not to give the boys’ eyes any detail…I suppose his own nose grew when he chose the title.
Navigating by Lisa Grossman had me presuming it was a photograph until I got close enough to realize it is an oil painting by that Lawrence artist. Originally from Western Pennsylvania, Grossman earned an associate’s degree from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and moved to Kansas City in 1988 to work as an illustrator for Hallmark Cards. She says that she began plein air (open air) painting from direct observation in earnest when she discovered the tallgrass prairies of east-central Kansas, and she left Hallmark in 1995 to pursue painting full-time.
Here is a detail showing a brushstroke in the work:
Another bit of modern trompe l’oeil, fooling my eye into thinking I was looking at a photograph, was Genesis by Jane Bunker, inspired by her childhood myopia that went undetected for several years. I remember my own myopia being caught in a vision screening in fifth grade, and marveling once I got my spectacles how I could see the leaves on the trees and details on my parents’ Buick LeSabre sedan from across the front yard.
Roger Shimomura‘s Yellow Fever was a busy acrylic that drew, pun intended, “on personal memory, historical trauma, and popular culture to confront and critique racial stereotypes”.
The highlight of the museum for me was an unexpected opportunity to see one of Joseph Ducreaux‘s paintings, Le Discret. His Self-portrait of the artist in the guise of a mocker became a social media meme some time ago. Ducreux attempted to break free from the constraints of traditional portraiture, and his interest in physiognomy—the belief that a person’s outer appearance, especially the shape and lines of their face, could reveal their inner character —influenced him.
Another favorite for me in the museum, which prompted me to sit on a bench to admire it, was Grass by Tomoke Konoike (鴻池朋子). She crafted a Japanese wolf from wood, styrofoam, and aluminum and covered it in mirrors, creating a striking image of the animals which were exterminated in the 19th century.
The museum had superb lighting to make the piece stand out.
A work with stunning detail was Zen Temple of Techno by Du Kin, a large oil painting depicting Julia Govor, a Russian-born electronic musician. Du Kun renders musicians as monumental structures based on East Asian religious temples.
The detail in his work was stunning.
Wendy and I both loved the striking pose of Charlotte Sullivan in a portrait painted by an artist known only by the last name of Stephens. Her expression told volumes. She was both a studio model and administrator for the Kansas City Art Institute who succeeded despite Jim Crow laws enforcing segregation during much of her tenure from 1940-1975.
I will teach you, m’dear, How to hold your head holy and look forward.
An artwork that stuck out in a cabinet of curiosities was Navel by Carol Prusa. It is formed of silverpoint, graphite, titanium white pigment, and acrylic binder on an acrylic sphere with an internal light source.
Wendy was impressed by the detial on a reliquary of the True Cross, a silver work from Barcelona circa 1500.
I liked Untitled #751 (Craig’s Piece) by Petah Coyne, who was born in my hometown of Oklahoma City. The wax she used was developed in collaboration with a chemist, with melted candles in the structure which has spidery forms influenced by lace created by her great-grandmother.
The Spencer featured some Haitian art, including three fishing boats and two fishermen on open water by Calixte Henry.
Another Haitian artist, Ernst Prophète, painted but…I dreamt.
I’m so glad we stayed in Lawrence and took in the Spencer. It was better than I expected, with some works I recognized from other museums, but others that stood out in my experience.
After touring the museum, Wendy and I returned to our hotel to reset before heading back out to explore more of downtown Lawrence.
Meador Manor 
