Elizabeth Miller Watkins Memorial Statue Coming to Jayhawk Boulevard

This is such an exciting year! Not only are we celebrating Watkins Hall’s 100th Anniversary, but we will be unveiling the site of a memorial to our own Mrs. Watkins! The KU Committee for Public Art on Campus has approved a site for us – at the intersection of Lilac Lane and Jayhawk Boulevard. She will be in the semicircle of grass, outlined by a limestone retaining wall on the north side of Fraser Hall. The FIRST STATUE OF A WOMAN AT KU – Elizabeth Miller Watkins!

OUR ARTIST HAS BEEN CHOSEN!  Spencer Schubert of E S Schubert Scullpture Studio, Kansas City, Kansas.  In his application letter, he wrote:

Thank you for the opportunity to submit my studio’s qualifications for the Elizabeth Miller Watkins Memorial. I am a 2000 graduate of the School of Fine Arts at the University of Kansas. I have spent the last 26 years creating figurative bronze monuments, but were it not for the University of Kansas Sculpture Department, I would not be a bronze sculptor today. It would be a great honor to help create a statue for my alma mater.

I love the line in your Call To Artists about Elizabeth Miller Watkins having “fingerprints all over KU”. It is very exciting that she is going to be memorialized in this way. In my senior year, when a minor foundry incident left me with a burn, Professor Hachmeister sent me to Watkins Health Center. How fitting to use those hands, treated in a building built with her donation, to create a bronze monument to her contributions to the university.

I learned to sculpt, make molds, and cast bronze in the KU Foundry. Any level of involvement with the KU Sculpture Department in this project would be a dream come true. At the very least we could incorporate some demonstrations to the students, and perhaps we could even involve them in casting part of the statue in the foundry.

I would be honored to be considered to sculpt a fitting tribute to Elizabeth Miller Watkins. The three statues currently standing along Jayhawk Boulevard were created by Elden Tefft, the man who built the KU bronze foundry, and Daniel Chester French, one of the most well-known sculptors in American history. There aren’t words to describe how rarified that air is. The statue of Elizabeth Miller Watkins needs to be sculpted in a timeless manner to stand proudly beside those works of art, while also standing on her own as an icon for the students who pass by her day after day.

Spencer Schubert

E S Schubert Sculpture Studio

Now that we have this excellent site – on Jayhawk Boulevard - we need to raise the funds for the life sized, bronze statue. There are substaintial pledges to the project already, but we want everyone to be a part of this project. If you are an alumnus, remember how much you saved by living in Watkins or Miller and how that experience added to your life. If you are a resident, just give what you can. Let’s all be a part of this together! 

Send your donation to Kitchen 8, reference it’s for the Memorial. Remember,
Kitchen 8 is a 501(c)3 – your donation is tax deductible.

Donations by Check can be made to:
Kitchen8
C/O Watkins Museum of History
1047 Massachusetts Street
Lawrence, KS 66044