Greensboro wouldn’t be what it is today if the Cone brothers had not decided to locate their textile business here.
Not only did Greensboro greatly benefit from the success of Moses and Ceasar Cone, but their sisters, who you may have heard less about, took full advantage of their brothers’ financial success.
The Greensboro History Museum is presenting “Dr. Claribel and Miss Etta in North Carolina” at 5:30 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 22 at 130 Summit Ave.
While the Cone Brothers were hard at work building a business, their sisters were working hard at enjoying their own interests, which included travel, education, art and the avant-garde. As a result Dr. Claribell and Etta Cone ended up with a significant art collection that included over 500 works by Henri Matisse. Their collection was bequeathed to two museums, the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro and the Baltimore Museum of Art. As you might surmise, the Cone sisters did not acquire their art collection by their travel to Greensboro and the North Carolina mountains, but by spending a considerable amount of time in Paris with their friends, including Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Pablo Picasso and, of course, Henri Matisse.
The presentation will include historic photographs of the Cone family (including many from the Bernard Cone Collection in the Greensboro History Museum Archives) and stories about Dr. Claribel and Miss Etta Cone and their time spent in the towns of Asheville, Greensboro and Blowing Rock.
The presenters, Dianna Cameron, curator of the Blowing Rock Art and History Museum (BRAHM) and Carrie Streeter, historian and Cone scholar, will share images and stories of the experiences of the Cone sisters.
Cameron and Streeter are co-curators of the exhibition “Modern Visions, Modern Art: The Cone Sisters in North Carolina,” which is on view at BRAHM through Nov. 30.
