Stagnation

Missouri native Gregory Ivy was vocally passionate about the need for a supportive, enriching community in the arts. By the time he retired in 1971, Ivy had founded an art colony and gallery, and he held multiple degrees in art and education from universities including the distinguished Teachers College, Columbia University in New York.

In 1935, Ivy moved to North Carolina to chair the art department of what was then UNC Greensboro’s Women’s College. As an adamant supporter of exchange in the arts, Ivy brought such notable New York abstractionists as Franz Kline and Philip Guston to the school as visiting artists. Prominent students of his include Maud Gatewood, Mary Leath Thomas, Anne Wall Thomas, Anne Frances Hill, and McDonald Bane. Another student, Lee Hall, recalled how Ivy—decidedly Modernist in both his artistic style and his personal philosophy—encouraged his students “to question what [they] had been taught was unquestionable.”