RELEASE DATE: APR 3, 2025
The Weatherspoon Art Museum at UNC Greensboro announces the naming of its atrium as the new Warmath Commons, in recognition of a major gift celebrating the Warmath family’s six decades of service and support. The funds for the Warmath Commons will further the museum’s commitment to community engagement by advancing the core mission of the Weatherspoon as a place of welcome, discovery, and engagement for the students, faculty, and staff of UNC Greensboro and the community of Greensboro.
The Warmath family legacy, led by Sarah Warmath and the late Jack Warmath, is a continuation of their early roles in raising funds for the Anne and Benjamin Cone Building, which helped to transform the organization from a small campus gallery into the Weatherspoon Art Museum, now one of the most prominent museums on a university campus in the United States.
Juliette Bianco, the Anne and Ben Cone Memorial Endowed Director of the Weatherspoon and the Associate Vice Chancellor for Museums and Creative Practice at the university, praises this latest contribution from the Warmath family: “The first experience of every visitor to the Weatherspoon Art Museum—whether from the sculpture courtyard or the Spring Garden Street entrance—is to be welcomed in the atrium. With this gift of support, the Warmath Commons will now and always mark the beginning of a new adventure for each visitor we see. The Warmath legacy at the Weatherspoon is clearly thriving.”
Designed in 1989 by acclaimed postmodern architect Romaldo Giurgola as a focal point for the Anne and Benjamin Cone Building, the 2,140-square-foot atrium serves as a convening space for campus and community and a crossroads for engagement with ideas about art and society through programs and special events.
Since the opening of the Anne and Benjamin Cone Building, Sarah and Jack Warmath have been inextricably linked to the museum’s iconic atrium thanks to their generous support of the acquisition of The Frieze (1982), by acclaimed American artist Tom Otterness. Dedicated to the memory of Sarah’s parents, Sarah Ford and Henry Worsham Dew, this monumental artwork graces one of the most prominent spaces in the museum—and indeed on the campus of UNC Greensboro.
With this naming gift, which supports UNCG’s transformative Light the Way campaign, the museum celebrates the impact Sarah Warmath and her family have had on the museum’s development, including her many years of service to the Weatherspoon Guild. The family’s commitment to the Weatherspoon has continued through their son Tim Warmath with his recent leadership on the Weatherspoon Art Museum Council. Along with the dedication of the Warmath Commons, the Weatherspoon will conduct and archive an extensive oral history about the family’s numerous contributions to the institution. A fall 2025 dedication ceremony will be announced soon.
Image: Spring Open House at the Weatherspoon Art Museum. Photo: Sean Norona, 2024.
About the Weatherspoon Art Museum
Mission
Embracing its public service role, the Weatherspoon Art Museum at UNC Greensboro fosters the ability of art to impact lives and connect multiple communities.
History
The Weatherspoon Art Museum at UNC Greensboro was founded by Gregory Ivy in 1941 and is the earliest of any art facilities within the UNC system. The museum was founded as a resource for the campus, community, and region, and its early leadership developed an emphasis—maintained to this day—on presenting and acquiring modern and contemporary works of art. A 1950 bequest from the renowned collection of Claribel and Etta Cone, including prints and bronzes by Henri Matisse and other works on paper by American and European modernists, helped establish the Weatherspoon’s permanent collection. During Ivy’s tenure, other prescient acquisitions included a 1951 suspended mobile by Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning’s pivotal 1949-50 Woman, and the first drawings by Eva Hesse and Robert Smithson to enter a museum collection.
In 1989, the museum moved into its present location in The Anne and Benjamin Cone Building designed by the architectural firm Mitchell Giurgola. The museum has six galleries and a sculpture courtyard with over 17,000 square feet of exhibition space. The American Alliance of Museums first accredited the Weatherspoon in 1995.
Collections + Exhibitions
The collection of the Weatherspoon Art Museum is one of the foremost of its kind in the Southeast. It represents all major art movements from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. Among the nearly 7,000 works in the collection are pieces by such prominent figures as Henry Ossawa Tanner, Edward Weston, Joseph Stella, David Smith, Jackson Pollock, Elizabeth Catlett, Louise Nevelson, Gordon Parks, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Cindy Sherman, Adrian Piper, Betye Saar, Amy Sillman, Nick Cave, Jennifer Steinkamp, and Sanford Biggers. The museum regularly lends to major exhibitions nationally and internationally.
The Weatherspoon is also known for its dynamic exhibition program. Through a lively annual calendar of exhibitions and a multidisciplinary educational program for audiences of all ages, the museum provides an opportunity for visitors to consider artistic, cultural, and social issues of our time—enriching the life of our university, community, and region.
UNC Greensboro
UNC Greensboro is a learner-centered public research university with 18,000 students in eight colleges and schools pursuing more than 150 areas of undergraduate and 200 areas of graduate study. Recognized nationally for helping first-generation and lower-income students find paths to prosperity, UNCG is ranked No. 1 most affordable institution in North Carolina for net cost by the N.Y. Times and No. 1 in North Carolina for social mobility by The Wall Street Journal. Designated an Innovation and Economic Prosperity University by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, UNCG is a community-engaged research institution with a portfolio of more than $67M in research and creative activity. The University creates an annual economic impact for the Piedmont Triad region in excess of $1B. Please visit uncg.edu and follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram, Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Weatherspoon Art Museum
UNC Greensboro
1005 Spring Garden Street
Greensboro, NC 27412, (336) 334-5770, weatherspoon@uncg.edu
For more information or press images, contact:
Loring Mortensen, Head of Communications, (336) 256-1451, lamorten@uncg.edu
