Crisp, Lucy Cherry [1]
Crisp, Lucy Cherry
By William S. Powell [2], 1979
4 Mar. 1899–25 Nov. 1977
[3]Lucy Cherry Crisp , museum administrator and poet, was born in Crisp, Edgecombe County [4], the daughter of Sellers M. and Annie Gorham Crisp. She was graduated from the North Carolina College for Women in Greensboro [5] with a degree in music and continued her education at Colum [6]bia [6] and Boston universities [7] and at Radcliffe College [8]. 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 [9] . She also wrote feature articles for many state papers and was the author of two volumes of poetry, Spring Fever [10], in dialect, published in 1935, and Brief Testament [11] , 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 [12], and for a few years was director of the Museum of Art, Science, and History in Florence, S.C. During World War II [13] she was director of the United Services Organization Club [14] at Greenville [15], N.C. In 1947 she became the director of an art museum in Raleigh [16] under the patronage of the North Carolina State Art Society [17] and continued in that position until 1955. This museum was the forerunner of the North Carolina Museum of Art [18]. 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 [19] to purchase art and to establish procedures for governing the North Carolina Museum of Art [18]. She also assisted in assembling the staff, purchasing equipment, and training volunteers for the new museum that opened in 1956.
After leaving Raleigh [16]she served as director of the Greenville Art Center. She was a member of the Presbyterian church, of the American Association of Museums [20], and of the Society of Mayflower Descendants [21]. She was buried in Falkland Cemetery, Pitt County [22], in the community where her family had lived for several generations.
References:
Lucy Cherry Crisp MSS (East Carolina University Manuscript Collection, Greenville)
Ola Maie Foushee, Art in North Carolina (1972)
Greenville Daily Reflector , 27 Nov. 1977
William S. Powell, ed., North Carolina Lives (1962)
Additional Resources:
Lucy Crisp Cherry Papers, East Carolina University: http://digital.lib.ecu.edu/special/ead/findingaids/0154/ [23]
Image Credits:
"Lucy Cherry Crisp with her bust of George Washington Carver." Photo courtesy of the Digital Collections at East Carolina University. Available from http://digital.lib.ecu.edu/1311 [3](accessed April 10, 2012).
1 January 1979 | Powell, William S.