Alumna and arts leader returns to Lawrence to guide the Spencer

A national expert in the visual arts with deep roots in Kansas and at KU is  the new director of KU’s  Spencer Museum of Art. Saralyn Reece Hardy, director of the Salina Art Center and former director of museums and visual arts at the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington,  D.C., will begin her new position March 14.

It is a homecoming for Hardy, c’76, g’94, who worked as a project coordinator at the Spencer from 1977 to 1979. The Reece family also has a long relationship with KU dating back to her grandmother  Nelle Taylor Dyatt, who graduated in 1909 with the first class of KU nursing  students, and includes her parents, her husband, three sisters and three sons.

“Engagement with art and artists transforms individuals, communities and societies. I believe this museum and its collections can be a creative connective force across this campus and among diverse disciplines,” Hardy said. “I am eager  to collaborate with the extraordinary ensemble of scholars resident on this  campus."

Except for the three-year appointment at the NEA from 1999 to 2002, Hardy has  led the nationally known Salina Art Center since 1986, overseeing the growth  of the center from a small community gallery to a contemporary art center with  a national and international exhibition schedule, an education program, a youth  art interactive area and a film program.  At the NEA, Hardy was the chief museum and visual arts expert. She reviewed proposals from the field, selected expert peer panels, proposed funding amounts  and presented grant recommendations to the National Council for the Arts. Hardy also has been active on the national art scene through her professional activities with the Getty Leadership Institute advisory committee, American Federation  of Arts museum directors' program, American Association of Museums, Museum  Trustee Association, Museum Loan Network Advisory Panel and the Institute for  Museum and Library Services. She also served on the NEA’s Creation & Presentation panel for Visual Arts.

With more than 25,000 catalogued items of art in all media from the United States, Europe and Asia, the Spencer museum is one of the major university art collections in North America. The museum includes 22,473 square feet of exhibition space and houses the Kress Foundation Department of Art History  and the 150,000-volume Murphy Art and Architecture Library.


The Reece family’s long relationship with KU, in addition to Hardy’s grandmother, includes great-aunt Mabel Alice Taylor, a 1912 KU graduate, and  Hardy’s parents, former Republican national committeewoman Marynell Dyatt Reece, c’42, and  contractor Harry William “Bill” Reece, b’41, of Scandia. Hardy’s husband, Randall, graduated from KU in 1976 and son Stephen followed in 2000. Her son Thomas is now attending, as did her son William. Her sisters are all KU graduates: Deanell Reece Tacha, c’68, chief judge of the U.S. Court of  Appeals, 10th Circuit; Mary Lou Reece, c’77, president of Reece Construction, now  of Wichita; and speech pathologist Jane Ann Reece Ewy, d’70, of Salina.