Kansan Summer Weekly
Arts and Entertainment
Wednesday, July 22, 1987
7
By DEBRA A. PETERSON
Down on the Hudson to West Point, by Charles Herbert Moore (1840-1930), is one of the 55 paintings featured in *All Season and Every Light*. 19th-
Special to the Kansan
The posters outside say it's a cool place to go, but what's inside the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas is worth seeing no matter what the temperature.
The art museum, near the northeast entrance of the campus on Mississippi Street and across from the Kansas Union, is acknowledged by the city to be one of the finest university art museums in the country.
"At the time we had our inaugural address, the director of the Fogg Museum at Harvard said our new building was a gem of a museum." Shankel said. "We recently got reaccredited by the Association of American Museums and they said we were one of the most stable and thoroughly professional university art museums in the country."
The museums's diverse collection includes Oriental and medieval art; American painting, graphics and photography; ancient sculpture dating back to 2500 B.C. and works by modern artists such as George Segal and Max Ernst.
Carol Shankel, managing editor at the Spencer Museum, said the museum had gained that reputation because of its art collection, its excellence as a teaching facility, its training of museum personnel and because the building itself had so many modern conveniences.
The museum's current main exhibit, All Seasons and Every Light: 19th Century American Landscapes, features 55 works by artists from the Hudson River School. Their paintings and drawings present serene views of seashores, mountains, plains and fields in a younger, cleaner, more innocent America. The works on loan from Vassar College Art Gallery, in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., will be on display in the Kress Gallery of the
museum through Sunday
A stroll through other galleries at the museum will reveal names that might ring a bell, even for novices to art history. Thomas Hart Benton, John Singer Sargent, Richard Aaviland, Stieglitz, Louise Nevelson, Winslow Homer and Thomas Gainsborough are all represented.
But these well-known artists and their works are not the mainstay of the museum's collection.
"We have a very fine study collection," said Doug Tilghman, assistant director. "They're not masterpieces, but they're good for studying the history of art."
The Spencer collection, stored in two climate-controlled rooms in the basement, is used by professors and students of the fine arts. Items from the collection are taken out of the basement and displayed for about three months at a time on a rotating basis.
Tlighman said that one reason the museum had so many items in its collection is that its first gift in 1917 was of more than 8,000 objects. They were donated by Sally Casey Thayer, who traveled all over the world glassware, ceramics and other small objects that, presumably, fit easily into her suitcase.
Also, Tilghman said, for museums to acquire art 20 or 30 years ago was easier because they acquired the art from collector families. Once acquired, the museums, unlike the families, rarely relinquished the art. As more art passed from private collections into museums, there was less art available. Many museums do, however, loan art.
The willingness of other museums to loan art is the reason the Spencer is able to offer as many as 12 exhibits a year.
Tilghman said after a curator got
an idea for an exhibit, it can take as many as three years to obtain the necessary funding, find out which museums have the works needed to make the exhibit meaningful and persuade museums to loan it.
The Spencer has loaned exhibits it has prepared to museums like the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
"We've loaned 50 exhibitions that we've originated to museums all over
the United States," Tilghman said. "We've been very successful at loaning our shows out."
Museums that borrow exhibits from the Spencer Museum pay a rental fee and shipping costs. Revenues from rental fees are important to an institution that receives only half its funds from the state. Tilghman said that the museum must apply two years in advance for exhibit grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities or the National Endowment for the Arts.
Century American Landscapes. The exhibit at Spencer Art Museum will continue through Sunday.
"It itkes a lot of planning and coordination," he said.
Despite careful planning, problems crop up. Tighman said that, because shows are booked so far in advance, a museum director who had agreed to loan a work of art might change his mind in a year. Or, a museum that had partially funded a Spencer show by agreeing to rent it at a future date
might back out. Tilghman said that the long-range planning must take these setbacks into account, but he understood funding problems.
"We've had difficult years," he said. "In 1982, the state rescinded part of our budget because of shortfalls and so on. That happened to be a year that we had a particularly expensive series booked. We were able to get the support we needed from contributors."
Travel to a different dimension with Innerspace
Staff writer
By KRISTEN HAYS
The best thing about Innerspace is that all of its elements fit together with such cohesiveness that nothing is forsaken. The two lead actors, Dennis Quaid and Martin Short, are equally likable and work as a team. The fascinating special effects enhance the movie rather than overwhelm it, and the script has both wit and poignancy.
After theaters have been flooded with films taking place in outer space, Steven Spielberg and Joe Dante present a funny, fast-paced film exploring Innerspace.
has other plans for Tuck.
Lt. Tuck Pendelton, played by Quaid, is an undisciplined fellow with a love for boise. To teach him how to follow orders, his superiors assign him to a project where, inside a small spaceship, he will be miniaturized and injected into a rabbit's bloodstream. However, the evil Dr. Scrimshaw, played by Kevin McCarthy,
Martin Short plays Jack Putter, a grocery store clerk who suffers from frequent anxiety attacks. His doctor recommends that he take a vacation, but he shows up at the wrong place at the wrong time. In order to protect Tuck from being abducted by Scrimshaw, Tuck is injected into Jack's tush.
From that moment on, Jack must try to find the microchips used to miniatureize Tuck. One miniaturizes, and the other, which restores to normal size, is in Scrimshaw's grip. In order to restore Tuck, Jack must face danger beyond anything like "coupon day," with the little voice of Tuck telling him what to do.
Dennis Quaid and Martin Short are both capable comedians whose careers have had their ups and downs. Quaid, though good in The Right Stuff, and Breaking Away, hasn't yet had a role where he could show his steel. Remember Jaws ?7
But here, his good-natured grin and easygoing style is irresistible.
Short has been given the short end of the stick so far. He was the sole standout during his stint on a poor year of Saturday Night Live and his starring role on the big screen in The Three Amigos was less than worthy of his comedic talent. Here, both he and Quaid are given a chance to be funny as well as sympathetic.
Jack is rather pathetic, unable to deal with grocery store pressure, but having Tuck injected into his body could be the best thing that ever happened to him. He learns to stand up for himself and face problems with zest.
The friendship that develops between Tuck and Jack is one of mutual need at first. Tuck needs Jack to retrieve the microchip that Scrisimsh stole so he can get back to his regular size. Jack needs Tuck to bring into his inner reservoir of strength. However, the men eventually come to have a mutual respect for each other.
They even love the same woman, Tuck's girlfriend Lydia, played by Meg Ryan. When Jack and Lydia kiss, Tuck is transferred from Jack's body to hers, and finds a pleasant surprise awaiting him there, before Lyda has even had her first bout of morning sickness.
Innerspace is a pleasant example of how good parts can make up an excellent whole. Andrew Laslow's photography is fascinating, much like PBS' The Body Human series. We see Jack's pumping heart, red blood cells, and optical nerve. We also see the embryo in Lydia's womb. Thus, as Jack says, Tuck gets to see things about Jack and Lydia that they'll never see themselves.
Jeffery Boam's and Chip Proser's script fits the molds of Quaid and Short's acting styles perfectly, and Jerry Goldsmith's music, like the special effects, adds an extra dimension to the film.
The scene where Jack and Tuck "dance" to *Twistin' The Night Away* is hilarious. Short's jerky movements make one reminisce about his nerdy, Ed Brimley SNL character, and Quaid gets off on the music while eating pudding in his cramped little pod.
Kevin McCarthy, who worked with Dante in Twilight Zone: The Movie, and Fiona Lewis, who plays his sexually dynamic assistant, are the bad guys who want to use the miniaturization process in warfare, with Tuck as their guinea pig. However, the miniaturization process is used against them, leaving the film with sequel possibilities.
Overall, *Innerspace* is thoroughly enjoyable because everything works. If it has flaws, they don't stand out enough to merit mention, and it can appeal to simple comedy lovers as well as special-effects buffs.
Performances set
The River City Reunion of writers, poets, musicians and filmmakers who contributed to the beat movement of the 1960s and '70s will kick off Sept. 7 and continue through Sept. 13.
Among the literary figures and artists to appear at the Reunion are Ray Manzarek, Robert Creeley and Ed Sanders.
Manzarek, former Doors keyboardist, will join rock poet Michael McClure at 9 p.m. Sept. 10 in Liberty Hall, 642 Massachusetts St. Creeley, a poet, will perform at 9 p.m. at Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire St.
Sanders' apperance will be announced later.
The film series showing at Liberty Hall has been scheduled. Some of the films are: Chappaquap, which will be shown at 2 p.m. Sept. 10 and 4 p.m. Sept. 12. This Song For You, Jack and Pull My Daisy and Towers Open Fire will be shown at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. Sept. 8.
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