Lawrence, Kansas, USA
This design for a major addition to the Spencer Museum of Art (SMA) at the University of Kansas fulfills crucial program requirements while strengthening the museum’s identity as a vibrant community resource. Informed by a deep understanding of SMA’s goals and contemporary thinking about collection accessibility, the design showcases the museum’s new programming and visible storage and features a soaring public space: a gift to the people of northeast Kansas that advances SMA’s mission within its community.
Spencer Museum of Art Addition by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, won an American Architecture Award 2025 from The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design.
The project is the latest in our long relationship with the Spencer Museum, which began in 2010, with our engagement as master-plan architect, and has included two earlier phases of renovations, completed in 2016 and 2022.
In 2024 the university launched two campus planning initiatives in the immediate neighborhood, to the north and south of the museum, that promised to bring significant changes to the KU campus. Caught in the middle of these transformations, the Spencer Museum was forced to reconsider the original master plan, giving fresh attention to the museum’s posture toward the KU campus as well as to the Lawrence, Kansas, community.
In addition, SMA’s space needs have evolved over time. The collection has increased steadily by 2.42 percent a year since 1980, while the footprint of the museum has stayed constant for more than four decades, including over the recent renovations. Storage is now a critical issue, with 50 percent of the collection off-site. Another important consideration for SMA is evolving thought about how collections can and should be accessible to visitors.
These factors set the stage for our work on Phase III. We started with a qualitative and quantitative assessment of SMA’s critical needs, including educational space requirements for the university as well as for K–12. Using data from the past five years, we arrived at a space program and concept plan for the museum.
The Addition adds 38,000 square feet to the existing museum, including 16,000 square feet of visible storage space, a gallery for large-scale works, and staff offices, plus a children’s art studio, an indoor-outdoor café, landscaped programmable outdoor space, and a Community Commons atrium space.
While most museums display only 5 percent of their collection, SMA already displays 8 percent, and the design makes even more of the collection visible to the public—at least 50 percent—thanks in part to new storage compartments that allow viewing and new hanging racks for the painting collection. This increased visibility and accessibility of the artworks benefit not only the KU community and Lawrence residents but national and international scholars who avail themselves of the museum’s collections.
Open beyond museum hours, the atrium is a multipurpose space for study, museum events, KU symposiums, and town halls, offering views of the adjacent Marvin Grove and Campus Campanile. SMA art is visible from the atrium, in vitrines embedded within the existing limestone facade, on the level four balcony, and through windows into new collections storage, inviting viewers to engage with the works in many different ways.
Architects: Pei Cobb Freed & Partners Architects LLP
Design Team: Yvonne Szeto, Katherine Bojsza, Min Lee, John Wang
Client: The University of Kansas
Renderings: Courtesy of the Architects
