Crisp, Lucy Cherry

By William S. Powell, 1979

4 Mar. 1899–25 Nov. 1977

[2]Lucy Cherry Crisp , museum administrator and poet, was born in Crisp, Edgecombe County [3], the daughter of Sellers M. and Annie Gorham Crisp. She was graduated from the North Carolina College for Women in Greensboro [4] with a degree in music and continued her education at Colum [5]bia [5] and Boston universities [6] and at Radcliffe College [7]. She taught piano and was supervisor of music in the public schools of North Carolina for a time and for a number of years contributed a weekly folk column, "Byways and Hedges," and a Sunday column, "Tar Heel Art," to the Raleigh News and Observer [8] . She also wrote feature articles for many state papers and was the author of two volumes of poetry, Spring Fever [9], in dialect, published in 1935, and Brief Testament [10] , published in 1947. Other poems by her were published in periodicals and anthologies. She served briefly as religious counselor at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana [11], and for a few years was director of the Museum of Art, Science, and History in Florence, S.C. During World War II [12] she was director of the United Services Organization Club [13] at Greenville [14], N.C. In 1947 she became the director of an art museum in Raleigh [15] under the patronage of the North Carolina State Art Society and continued in that position until 1955. This museum was the forerunner of the North Carolina Museum of Art [16]. While director of the museum, Miss Crisp edited North Carolina News of Art , a monthly bulletin, and in 1956 completed "A History of the North Carolina State Art Society." She served as secretary to a state art commission created in 1951 by the General Assembly [17] to purchase art and to establish procedures for governing the North Carolina Museum of Art [16]. She also assisted in assembling the staff, purchasing equipment, and training volunteers for the new museum that opened in 1956.

After leaving Raleigh [15]she served as director of the Greenville Art Center. She was a member of the Presbyterian church, of the American Association of Museums [18], and of the Society of Mayflower Descendants [19]. She was buried in Falkland Cemetery, Pitt County [20], in the community where her family had lived for several generations.