This bronze sculpture, 8 feet tall and weighing 3,000 pounds, signifies the importance of water to all living things. It is the gift of Clarence J. and Hazel M. Beck of Rye, N.H., to commemorate the 1994 centennial of Spooner Hall.

Clarence Beck is a 1943 metallurgical engineering graduate and a pioneer in nuclear and atomic research; in 1992 he received the Distinguished Engineering Service Award.

On May 25, 1986, KU's Vietnam War Memorial, the first on-campus commemoration in the nation, was dedicated. It honors 59 students and alumni who died or were declared missing in the conflict.

The 65-foot, L-shaped wall of native Kansas limestone, at the west end of Memorial Drive, was created by Doran Abel, an architecture major; Stephen Grabow, professor of architecture; and Greg Wade, KU’s landscape architect. Student Senate appropriations and donations from students, alumni, and veterans funded the memorial.

The Class of 1997 gave this reproduction of the University Seal depicting Moses kneeling before the burning bush. The image is surrounded by a Latin inscription that in English means, “I will see this great vision in which the bush does not burn.”

To honor World War I casualties, the Victory Highway Association began a campaign in 1921 to set a statue of a female bald eagle defending her eaglets at every county line along U.S. 40, then a transcontinental highway. The Douglas County statue, said to be the second in the country, was paid for by donations from local women’s clubs; its base was set on land donated by H.G. Van Neste north of the intersection of U.S. 40 and Kansas 32 at the Douglas-Leavenworth county line and dedicated May 27, 1929.

The first sculpture on campus, The Pioneer was a 1905 gift of Simeon B. Bell of Wyandotte County, Kan., a physician and real-estate speculator. In memory of his late wife, Bell donated land and funding for the Eleanor Taylor Bell Memorial Hospital in Kansas City, Kan., which became the University of Kansas School of Medicine and the University of Kansas Hospital.

The inscription on the Spooner Hall portico reads: “Whoso findeth wisdom findeth life,” and a sandstone owl, the symbol of wisdom, sits in a niche on the gable.

The owl may have been designed by the Spooner architect, Henry van Brunt (1832-1903), a partner in the Kansas City, Mo., firm of Van Brunt & Howe. He was an 1854 graduate of Harvard University and a student of Richard Morris Hunt, the most notable American proponent of the Gothic Revival and Renaissance Revival styles.

This large piece, on the east lawn of Green Hall, was purchased by the Spencer Museum in 1987 with support from the Wescoe Fund, endowed by former Chancellor and Mrs. W. Clarke Wescoe.

The piece honors Barbara Wescoe’s father, Judge Willard M. Benton, a 1920 alumnus of the School of Law. It was dedicated Oct. 31, 1987.

The bronze, cast and welded, is 8 feet 10 inches tall, 15 feet 11 inches wide and 7 feet deep. It portrays a figure in the dynamic "Snake Creeps Down" pose typical of the soft-style martial art of tai chi, which emphasizes strength and balance.

Above the main entry of the former Watkins Memorial Hospital, which opened in 1932, is a large limestone relief depicting St. George slaying the Dragon, representing disease.

It was designed by Professor Marjorie Whitney, a 1929 alumna and chair of KU’s design department (1940-68). The building is now Twente Hall. Other Whitney ornamentations on Twente include a sculpted door and bas-reliefs of animals, garlands, and flowers on the tower.

This aluminum piece, painted black and mounted on the north promenade of the Spencer Museum of Art, is by Louise Nevelson and was purchased by the Spencer Museum in 1983 with support from the Price R. & Flora Reid Foundation, the Spencer Fund, KU Endowment, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

It is 8 feet tall, 1 foot 10 inches wide and 2 feet 6 inches deep and is mounted on a base approximately 2 feet square.

This large steel sculpture — 35 feet tall, 24 feet wide and weighing more than 30 tons — is by sculptor Dale Eldred (1933-93) and was a gift to the Spencer Museum of Art from Mr. and Mrs. John M. Simpson, who had exhibited it at their home in Salina, Kan.

In June 1981 the piece was delivered to a site selected by a university committee that included Charles Eldredge, director of the Spencer Museum of Art, on a triangular piece of land directly south of the Prairie Acre at Sunnyside Avenue and Sunflower Road.