FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

GEORGE SCHRIEVER NAMED ‘FRIEND OF THE UNIVERSITY’

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo., April 13, 2002 - Missouri native George Schriever, now resident of New York City, has been named the 2001 “Friend of the University” by the Southeast Missouri University Foundation.

The award will be presented Saturday, April 13, by Dr. Kenneth W. Dobbins, president of Southeast Missouri State University, at the annual President’s Council dinner at the Show-Me Center. The award previously has been presented annually during Homecoming weekend. The “Friend of the University” award, which recognizes those who support and who are closely associated with the mission, purposes, plans and programs of the University, is the highest honor bestowed by the Southeast Missouri University Foundation.

When the Foundation Board established this award, it also established the criteria for the Friend of the University. The Friend of the University must be a person who has the respect of the community and the University, and one whose actions have confirmed their interest and involvement with the University.

George and his late wife, Placide, have made several generous contributions to the University including a $100,000 endowment to the University Museum, a $150,000 academic scholarship endowment and a collection of valuable paintings, furniture and other art objects to benefit the University Museum. The University Museum at the River Campus also will benefit from an extremely generous planned gift of $520,000. The total amount of the Schrievers’ financial support of the University reaches well over a million dollars.

In addition, George and Placide told their friends in the New York art world about the University, and some of those friends have presented their exhibits at the University Museum and contributed their artwork for the benefit of future generations of University students and patrons of the arts.

“Mr. Schriever has been a significant leader in providing funding to support a number of endeavors here at Southeast,” Dobbins said. “We are grateful for his tremendous contributions to this University. Because of his generosity and the scholarship he has endowed, the lives of several young people in Southeast Missouri already have been touched. Mr. Schriever also has made a commitment to support the River Campus. We are extremely fortunate to have supporters with the level of commitment shown by George Schriever. We deeply appreciate his continued dedication to Southeast Missouri State.”

Now retired, Schriever formerly worked for the prestigious Kennedy Galleries in New York City, where he became an expert on the art of the American West. He later took a position in Denver as a curator of the Anschutz Corporation Collection, the largest private holding of art of the American West. Many of Schriever’s research notes, personal papers and other materials related to his work on the art of the West are now housed at the Smithsonian Institution.

Both George and Placide were born in St. Louis. Her father, Charles Daues, was born in Cape Girardeau in 1878, attended St. Mary’s School, and the Cape public schools, and graduated from Southeast in 1898.

Daues later became a lawyer and had a distinguished career as assistant prosecuting attorney for Cape Girardeau County, prosecuting attorney in St. Louis, City Counselor in St. Louis, and presiding judge of the Missouri Court of Appeals.

Placide’s father was the only connection between Southeast Missouri State University and the Schrievers until they arrived in Cape Girardeau in the 1970s to attend Elderhostels at Southeast. It was then they met former University Museum Director James Parker, and Schriever said he particularly grew to love to hear lectures by Dr. Frank Nickell, director of the Center for Regional History. Their friendship with Nickell and Parker continued and has blossomed into a strong affection for the University and its Museum.

In 1997, Schriever donated a bronze sculpture, a print, a mask from Gabon and a landscape by a Missouri artist to the University Museum collection. More recently he contributed a small circa, 1850 pastel portrait of Christian Heinrich Meyer, a contemporary acrylic painting, titled “Carbonado 1,” by St. Louisan Seitu James Smith, and two pastels of Union Square by New York artist Violet Baxter.

Schriever said the monetary value of the donations is not important to him.

“It has to be something I think has art value.”