A List
6/27/05

ST. LAWRENCE AWARDED GRANT FOR ARTS FACILITIES

CANTON – The Maurer Family Foundation has awarded a grant of $200,000 to St. Lawrence University, helping to make possible the next phase of renovations and improvements to arts facilities in the Noble Center on campus.

In recognition, the center's new printmaking studio will be named The Maurer Family Studio.

Several members of the Maurer family are graduates of St. Lawrence: Gilbert C. Maurer '50, Palm Beach, Florida; Christopher C. '74 and Holly Wright Maurer '75, and their son, Paul C. Maurer '03, all of Charlotte, North Carolina; Jonathan G. Maurer '81, Pelham, New York; and Meredith Maurer Hutchison '81, Westport, Connecticut.

In 2005, St. Lawrence completed Phase I of a multi-phase project to transform its arts curriculum, supported by renovation and improvement in facilities for fine arts, music, speech and theatre, the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery. The $1.2 million first phase also increases opportunity for faculty and students across the arts disciplines to collaborate on work in new ways.

The $200,000 grant from the Maurer Family Foundation will help the University to move forward with the second phase of the project, which includes equipping a state-of-the-art Center for Arts Technology with teaching labs, an open computer lab, audio and video editing studios and a showcase area; a photography studio and multipurpose classrooms.

A previous grant from the Maurer Family Foundation supported the Maurer Family Student Music Production Series at St. Lawrence.

"The Maurer Family Foundation was founded on the conviction that the arts are a critical component of not only a liberal arts education but of our society as a whole," said Gilbert Maurer. "With this gift the Maurer family hopes to further accelerate the development of St. Lawrence University’s arts facilities, achieving standards that reflect the highest level of everything that characterizes the St. Lawrence experience."

University President Daniel F. Sullivan stated, "I am extremely grateful for the generous support that the Maurer Family Foundation has shown St. Lawrence. We have been able, with its assistance, to move our music programs forward and foster successful interdisciplinary collaborations between departments. This recent grant will not only allow us to continue our facilities project, it will also help us leverage the additional funds needed to achieve our ambitious goals for providing opportunities for students in the arts."

The Maurer Family Foundation was founded in 1995 by Ann and Gilbert Maurer to support the arts in America. Through its charitable gifts, the Maurer Family Foundation aims to provide financial assistance to those organizations and institutions whose goal is to enrich their communities and the lives of their patrons through programs of cultural value.

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