Spencer Museum slates black-tie gala

The Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art will have a benefit dinner and exhibition preview at 6 p.m. Friday to kick off its 25th year and to introduce the major exhibition of its fall schedule.

The black-tie event begins with hors d’oeuvres in the Central Court of the museum. Amir Khosrowpour, a Kansas University senior, will play the Liszt piano. In March, Khosrowpour was named the best collegiate pianist at the Music Teachers’ National Association Collegiate Artist Performance Competition.

Partygoers will preview “Milk & Eggs: The American Revival of Tempera Painting, 1930-1950,” which runs through Nov. 17. The show presents art by U.S. artists, working in a variety of styles, who engaged in a revival of the medieval technique of tempera painting from 1930 to 1950. The 60 artists include Andrew Wyeth and his father N.C. Wyeth, Thomas Hart Benton, Jackson Pollock, George Tooker, Jacob Lawrence and Paul Cadmus.

After an introduction of the exhibit, partygoers will move to the ballroom of the Kansas Union for a three-course dinner and music by the Jazzhaus Big Band. Dancing, with performances by six couples from the Camelot Ballroom, will conclude the evening.

Tickets are $100, with tables seating 10 available for $950. For reservations, contact Sandra London at 864-0141 or sglondon@ku.edu.

John Brown relative to give program

Council Grove “Poverty, Persecution and Death: The Life of Florella Adair,” a dramatization of the life of the half-sister of John Brown, will be at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Kaw Mission State Historic Site, 500 N. Mission.

The monologue will be delivered by Mary Florella Ward Buster, a descendant of Florella Adair.

Before coming to the Kansas Territory in 1855, Adair earned a degree from Oberlin College and joined her husband, the Rev. Samual Adair, in a cabin near Osawatomie, where they experienced the hardship of frontier life while remaining true to their abolitionist beliefs.

The program is free and open to the public.

Professor to talk about dinosaurs

Kansas City, Mo. Raymond Rogers, assistant professor of geology at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., will give the lecture “Journey of the Mesozoic of Madagascar: An Introduction to the Dinosaurs of the Red Island” at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Linda Hall Library, 5109 Cherry St.

Recent expeditions in the Mahajanga Basin of northwestern Madagascar have uncovered preserved vertebrae fossils that yield new clues about mammals, crocodiles, birds, snakes, turtles and dinosaurs.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Events features East Indian music

Overland Park Pratichi Club of Kansas City will present “An Evening of Indian Classical Music and Dance Performance” from 6:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday at the Performing Arts Center of Blue Valley Northwest High School.

The program will include a sitar recital by Pandit Budhaditya Mukherjee, the world’s leading sitar player. He has performed in the United States, Europe and Japan. He will be accompanied by Sanjoy Mukherjee on tabla.

Indian classical dance, called Bharat Natyam, will be performed by Samarpita Bajpai.

Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students. For information or tickets, call (913) 829-2309. Tickets will be available at the door. The club’s Web site is www.pratichi.com.

Lawrence quilter in show in Sedan

The show will be part of the grand opening activities of a 1911-era two-story barn that has been restored.

Other quilt designers are Alma Allen, Lynn Hagemeier, Karla Menaugh, Terry Thompson, Dorothy Brinkman and Indygo Junction.