Sallie Casey Thayer, née Casey (February 14, 1856 – September 10, 1925) was a Kansas City art collector and advocate. Her diverse collection of fine and decorative art became the founding gift of the

Spencer Museum of Art The Spencer Museum of Art is an art museum operated by the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, United States. History In 1917, the Kansas City art collector Sallie Casey Thayer donated her collection of over seven thousand works of art, ...

Early life

Thayer was born in

Covington, Kentucky Covington is a list of cities in Kentucky, home rule-class city in Kenton County, Kentucky, United States. It is located at the confluence of the Ohio River, Ohio and Licking River (Kentucky), Licking rivers, across from Cincinnati to the north ...

and was a great-grandniece of US Supreme Court Chief Justice

John Marshall John Marshall (September 24, 1755July 6, 1835) was an American statesman, jurist, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the fourth chief justice of the United States from 1801 until his death in 1835. He remai ...

. After attending women's college in the 1870s, she married in 1880, merging her considerable social capital with that of prominent Kansas City merchant William Bridges Thayer (1852–1907). He would shortly become a partner in the Emery, Bird, Thayer Dry Goods Company.

Career

Acquisitive and catholic in her tastes, Sallie Casey Thayer amassed a collection of more than 7,500 objects over her lifetime, including more than 6,000 rare books, original artworks by

Winslow Homer Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – September 29, 1910) was an American landscape painter and illustrator, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters of 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in ...

and

Robert Henri Robert Henri (; June 24, 1865 – July 12, 1929) was an American painter and teacher. As a young man, he studied in Paris, where he identified strongly with the Impressionists, and determined to lead an even more dramatic revolt against A ...

, hundreds of Japanese prints, thousands of glass objects from virtually every era, antique textiles from four continents, Victorian valentines, snuff bottles, folk samplers, and quilts. Her collection was a trove of objects of almost every description, brought together "to encourage the study of fine arts in the Middle West". By 1914, the collection had grown to fill her home, and Thayer began actively advocating for the establishment of a permanent public art institution in the city—a dream she would ultimately abandon. From 1914 to 1917, Thayer vocally criticized Kansas City's cultural environment, arguing that "although the city had come of age financially in the late 1800s, it had not addressed its need for libraries, educational facilities, and, most of all, museums." She called the new Union Station "hideously ugly", and she once decried the lack of women on the Board of Parks Commissioners, "for the men, as a rule, haven't much culture nor any well developed ideas on the subject of color aesthetics". In 1917, with the Nelson-Atkins Museum yet to be built—although enjoying earlier momentum and available funds in the region to establish an art institution—Thayer donated her collection to the

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States. Two branch campuses are in the Kansas City metropolitan area on the Kansas side: the university's medical school and hospital ...

in Lawrence. There, it found a home in the Helen F.

. In 2016, the Spencer Museum is scheduled to mount an exhibition featuring the Thayer collection and highlighting her commitment to women and their role in civic affairs and municipal culture.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thayer, Sallie Casey 1856 births 1925 deaths People from Covington, Kentucky American women artists American art collectors Artists from Kentucky