If you enjoy art in the Triad, it’s not unusual to know and love the Weatherspoon Art Museum at UNC Greensboro. However, it is a bit unusual to have known and loved the Weatherspoon for more than sixty years. But that’s true for Sarah Warmath, a dedicated supporter of the museum for the last half-century, and then some. This coming Thursday, September 25, during its always popular Fall Open House, the Weatherspoon will celebrate the Warmath family’s six decades of service and support to the museum, as well as the naming of its atrium as the new Warmath Commons. This naming recognizes a major gift from the Warmath family, part of UNCG’s Light the Way campaign, that will advance the museum’s commitment to community engagement and further its role as a place of welcome, discovery, and connection for UNCG and the greater Greensboro community. The event will also recognize Sarah Warmath as the inaugural recipient of the Sarah Dew Warmath Museum Service Award that the Weatherspoon is creating in her honor.  

Sarah Warmath has been involved with the Weatherspoon since 1964, when it was the Weatherspoon Art Gallery and occupied the now-gone McIver Building. Although it was small by today’s standards, it was significant, and the first of its kind on a University of North Carolina campus. Warmath was a founding member of the Weatherspoon Guild and became part of the Board of Directors in 1967. She fondly remembers the leadership of director and art department head Bert Carpenter who, she said, “provided the soul for the collecting.” She also recalls much about the service of curator James Tucker, and the brilliance of faculty member and painter Andrew Martin.  And above all, she remembers that the Weatherspoon as the center of a burgeoning and lively visual arts community, where there was always something to learn. Warmath and other Weatherspoon Guild members attended every Weatherspoon lecture or event they could. And, alongside countless fundraising and advocacy efforts, they helped with gallery events in various ways, even providing home-baked treats when catering options were limited. 

Warmath was there for the origins of the much-loved “Art on Paper” exhibition, which came to be in 1965 through a partnership with the Dillard Paper Company. She enjoyed watching the collection growing over the latter half of the 60s, the 70s, and beyond. In the 1980s, she served as president of the Weatherspoon Guild and, together with her husband Jack Warmath, played a key role in rallying Greensboro’s arts community in support of the gallery’s growing ambitions. Their leadership helped build momentum around the Weatherspoon’s expansion into the newly constructed Anne and Benjamin Cone Building on the campus of UNCG—a space five times larger than its previous home, and the place where the gallery soon became the Weatherspoon Art Museum. The Warmaths, and especially Sarah, helped position the Weatherspoon to become what it is today: one of the most prominent art museums on a university campus in the United States.  

Sarah not only loves the museum, but she can provide a spot-on description for why it is remarkable:

“I think the Weatherspoon, for most of us, is a surprise … It’s to see something we haven’t seen whether it’s sculpture, or whether it’s very contemporary, and I think that’s part of the fun. I always see something that interests me, and something I want to know more about. And I always see something that I’ve known for 30 or 40 years—I like to look at them again, the favorites.” 

Warmath’s love for art came to her initially through her mother, who took her to galleries in New York City during her childhood. At Wellesley College, she was a history major but minored in art. While she and Jack were collectors, the ability to see and appreciate visual art was something that they needed to share with the broader community.  

Even in the early days, the Weatherspoon was, for Sarah, a welcoming, invigorating venue that was a natural fit for their contributions. She played an instrumental role in the establishment of the Weatherspoon Arts Foundation, ensuring that the collection would always remain with the Weatherspoon. And in 1990, the Warmaths supported the acquisition of “The Frieze,” a monumental sculpture by acclaimed American artist Tom Otterness that encircles the Weatherspoon’s iconic atrium, now the Warmath Commons. The gift of the sculpture was dedicated to Sarah’s parents, and she was standing by as it was installed.  

While so much about the Weatherspoon Art Museum has changed over the years, its mission of engaging visitors with a superior collection of modern and contemporary art has endured — and so has Sarah Warmath’s support. Over the past four decades, successive museum directors have noted the consistency, depth, and impact of her involvement. 

“Sarah was fearless, she was engaged. She was always open to ideas,” said Ruth Beesch, who served as the museum’s director during a dynamic time—from 1989 through 1997. “She loved that part of the Weatherspoon’s mission—new and looking-forward.  She has this rare ability to be diplomatic, but also to be very, very strong and full of conviction. And I think she is somebody who everyone looked to for friendship, to a large degree.”  

Subsequent museum director, Nancy Doll, who served in the role from 1998 to 2020, has similar memories of the Warmaths and their engagement. 

“I think Sarah was one of the first people I met,” she recalled. “I always loved when I made introductions of speakers, or when I was speaking myself, to look out in the audience there, and the two of them were with the most rapt attention expressions on their faces. It just made you feel like whatever you were saying was brilliant.” 

Juliette Bianco, the Weatherspoon’s Anne and Ben Cone Memorial Endowed Director since 2020, notes that the museum’s future continues to be shaped by Sarah’s example: “Sarah has shown us that the true legacy of a museum is not only in the art we display but also in the people who bring it to life. She’ll often begin a conversation by gently taking your arm and saying, ‘Well, I wonder…’ or ‘Would you think…,’ and what follows is always a question that cuts right to the heart of things,” Bianco said. “That deep desire to understand is how she approaches life and art—with curiosity, empathy, and joy.” 

It’s that spirit of inquiry and connection that has helped shape the Weatherspoon into the welcoming, dynamic place it is today. 

 Throughout their life as a family, Sarah and Jack shared their appreciation for the arts with their four children, Tim, Lex, Sallie, and John. All will be present to honor their mother at next Thursday’s event, gathering in the Warmath Commons. Tim, who serves on the Weatherspoon Art Museum Council, has observed that his mother’s dedication to the gallery when she was a new resident of Greensboro demonstrated not only her passion and leadership for the arts, but also her desire to be deeply engaged with the community and build deep and abiding friendships.

Sarah Warmath will be honored on Thursday, September 25, during the Weatherspoon’s Fall Open House from 5–7 p.m. This event is free and open to all; no reservations are required.

Story by Susan Kirby Smith
Photo of Sarah Warmath by Carolyn de Berry