The University of Kansas

Colorado couple pledge $1.5 million for Spencer Museum of Art expansion

A Colorado couple who are alumni of the university have pledged $1.5 million to help fund a proposed expansion of the Spencer Museum of Art at KU.

Colorado Springs residents Lester “Dusty” Loo and Katherine Haughey Loo have pledged a $1 million bequest and $500,000 in cash to the Kansas University Endowment Association. The gifts will assist the university in its plan to remodel and expand the museum.

“Dusty and Kathy Loo recognize that the Spencer Museum of Art is one of KU’s best assets,” Chancellor Robert Hemenway said. “Their gift of time, talent and financial support for KU over the years has helped inspire many students, scholars and members of the public to use the museum’s valuable collections. We particularly appreciate their generous gift at a time when a museum expansion is on the horizon.”

Museum Director Andrea Norris said the museum, which was built in 1978, does not have enough space to display its extensive collection, an essential resource for teaching about art and culture.

A preliminary plan for the expansion calls for doubling the museum’s capacity and increasing the size of the Department of Art History and the Murphy Art and Architecture Library, which are housed in the museum. In addition, an expansion would allow the museum to display works currently held in storage, including some of the collection of more than 2,000 works of Kansas and Western art, 150 quilts and 4,000 decorative art objects, Norris said.

“The Spencer is a teaching museum, and students from across the university use it to enhance their learning in a vast array of subjects,” Norris said. “Because of the Spencer’s fine teaching resources, KU has produced numerous art museum directors and curators across the country. The valuable space we will gain through an expansion will help us broaden the important educational role of the Spencer. Dusty and Kathy’s extraordinary generosity will have a significant impact on our ability to pursue this goal, and we are honored by their commitment to the museum’s success.”

Kathy said it was important to her and her husband to support the arts at KU.

“We both believe very strongly that the arts are an integral part of people’s lives,” she said. “Dusty and I feel that the Spencer Museum of Art is one of the best college museums in the country, and we want to maintain that.”

She also said that she and Dusty wanted to support the university because of their long family association with KU and the quality of the university. Her great-grandfather Nelson Timothy Stephens was instrumental in founding the School of Law in 1878 with his brother-in-law, longtime law dean “Uncle Jimmy” Green. Other family members who graduated from KU include Kathy’s father, James M. Haughey, a 1939 law graduate, and her mother, Katherine Hurd Haughey, a 1938 fine arts graduate.

Dusty, art ‘60, was the president and chief executive officer of the greeting card company Looart Press and Current Inc., which his parents founded in 1947. After selling the company in 1987, he and his brother Gary became partners in the investment firm High Valley Group Inc. in Colorado Springs.

Kathy, political science ‘61, is a trustee for the Colorado Nature Conservancy and works as a nonprofit consultant. She and Dusty have two children, Susan Pattee and James Loo.