By Dan Nonte, University Relations
The Maud F. Gatewood Studio Arts Building.
University of North Carolina President Erskine B. Bowles will join Chancellor Patricia A. Sullivan as UNCG dedicates its two newest buildings at 9:45 a.m. Oct. 5, the university’s Founders Day.
The dedication ceremony will be held in the Maud F. Gatewood Studio Arts Building with a reception immediately following in the Beverly Cooper Moore and Irene Mitchell Moore Humanities and Research Administration Building.
Founders Day commemorates the opening of the State Normal and Industrial School, now UNCG, on Oct. 5, 1892, under President Charles Duncan McIver. During that first year, a total of 223 students came to campus to be taught by a faculty of 15. There were two main buildings on a 10-acre plot of land. Students could major in three areas of study.
Today, UNCG has an enrollment of more than 16,600 students. The campus has grown to about 200 acres and more than 70 buildings. Bachelor’s degrees are offered in 88 areas of study, master’s degrees in 66 areas, and doctorates in 22 areas.
The Gatewood and Moore gifts are part of the Students First Campaign. The university recently raised the goal for the campaign to $100 million. Scheduled to run through 2009, the campaign had received more than $59 million through Aug. 31.
The Beverly Cooper Moore and Irene Mitchell Moore Humanities and Research Administration Building at Forest and Spring Garden streets.
The Beverly Cooper Moore and Irene Mitchell Moore Humanities and Research Administration Building
Beverly Cooper Moore, a prominent Greensboro attorney, was chairman of the UNCG Board of Trustees from 1972 until 1975. He died in 2001. His wife, Irene “Rene” Mitchell Moore, is giving $2 million to UNCG through the Students First Campaign to name the building and establish 16 graduate student scholarships, known as the Moore Fellowships.
The $16.9 million building at the corner of Spring Garden and Forest streets is a North Carolina Higher Education Bonds project. Designed to complement the historic character of the campus, the 86,000-square-foot brick building provides teaching and office space for five departments – classical studies; English; German, Russian and Japanese studies; history; and Romance languages.
It also is home to the Office of Research and Public/Private Sector Partnerships, and the related offices of Undergraduate Research, Sponsored Programs, Research Compliance, Technology Transfer, and Contracts and Grants. The Center for Biotechnology, Genomics and Health; the Center for Creative Writing in the Arts; the Laboratory of Virtual Science Environments; the Mochlos Project; and the Race and Slavery Petitions Project are housed there.
Rene Moore and Chancellor Patricia A. Sullivan are particularly proud of the graduate student scholarships. “This is a wonderful opportunity for us to recruit outstanding graduate students nationally,” Sullivan said. “It helps us carve out a promising future for these students.”
Beverly Moore, a Greensboro native and founding partner of the law firm Smith Moore Smith Schell & Hunter (now known as Smith Moore LLP), one of North Carolina’s largest and most prestigious law firms, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1931. He earned his Juris Doctor degree at Yale University School of Law in 1934.
He served as president of the Greensboro Bar Association and the North Carolina Bar Association, and on the Board of Governors of the American Bar Association. He served as a trustee of the Consolidated University of North Carolina from 1967 until 1972.
Rene Moore, who lives in Greensboro, graduated from Sweet Briar College in 1942. The Moores married on July 10, 1943, and had two children, Beverly C. Moore Jr., who died in 2003, and Irene Warren Moore Miller.
Before this latest gift, the Moore family had established two scholarships at UNCG. The first, named in honor of Beverly’s mother, is the Georgia Cooper Moore Service and Leadership Award, provided to a rising senior on the basis of academics, service and leadership. The Beverly C. Moore Scholarship is awarded to deserving students for academic achievement.
The Maud F. Gatewood Studio Arts Building
Maud Florance Gatewood ’54 is considered by art historians, collectors and curators to be one of the most important painters in North Carolina history. She died in November 2004 at the age of 70, leaving UNCG an estate gift valued at more than $2 million.
The 99,000-square-foot building that bears her name is the home of the Department of Art and the Department of Interior Architecture. Located on Highland Avenue just off Spring Garden Street, it was built with $17.6 million from the North Carolina Higher Education Bonds and includes classrooms, design studios, a foundry, a ceramics studio, an art gallery and an outdoor sculpture yard.
“There could be no better choice than Maud Gatewood as the namesake for our studio arts building,” Sullivan said. “She was a one-of-a-kind individual who graduated from this institution and went on to achieve national and international recognition for her painting.
“She was one of the state’s finest artists, and it is an honor for this university to put her name on a building that will benefit our art and design students for years to come.”
At the age of 16, having skipped two grades in school, Gatewood entered Woman’s College where she earned her B.A. in fine arts in 1954. A year later, she completed an M.A. in painting at Ohio State University and later studied at UNCG and Harvard University.
Later in her career, she received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Salzburg, Austria. She exhibited widely in the southeastern United States and won numerous awards for her work. UNC-TV chronicled her life and work in the hour-long documentary “Gatewood: Facing the Canvas.”
Will South, curator of collections at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, said, “Maud was one of the state’s most fiercely independent artists. She set a standard for both innovation and integrity in her work.”
Gatewood became the first female member of the Caswell County Board of Commissioners in 1976 and served as chairperson until 1980. During her tenure, she advocated economic development, land use planning and expanded human resource services for the county. She also served on numerous state, local and national boards and commissions, including the N.C. Association of County Commissioners, the Piedmont Triad Council of Governments and the N.C. Arts Council.
The Weatherspoon held a Gatewood retrospective exhibition in 1994 that covered 40 years of her painting. The exhibition traveled to five museums throughout the South. UNCG awarded Gatewood an honorary doctorate in fine arts in 1999.
