Cone Sisters - Other Collections

Other Collections

A portion of the Cone art collection, including many Matisse lithographs and bronzes, resides at the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where the Cone Mills were located. These mills play a large part in the local history and in the Cone sisters' wealth. Moses H. Cone started these mills and had his vacation home Flat Top Manor in nearby Blowing Rock, North Carolina. The Cone sisters often visited their famous brother there.

Other visitors were Julius Cone and his wife Laura Weil, Etta's sister-in-law. Laura Cone was a loyal alumna of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Etta knew that the Weatherspoon Art Gallery had been established on campus in 1942 and that the organization was struggling to get established. Laura Cone asked her sister-in-law, Etta, if she would consider making a donation of art. In her will dated May 18, 1949, Etta left an astonishing collection to the Weatherspoon Art Gallery of sixty-seven Matisse prints and six Matisse bronzes as well as a large number of modern prints and drawings, including works by Pablo Picasso, Félix Vallotton, Raoul Dufy, and John D. Graham.