By Paul A. Miller '21
Terri Boor’s husband persuaded her to make him a promise: She was to continue pursuing her love of the arts even after his death. When he passed away in 1978, she kept that loving promise and, in the process, transformed the University at Albany.
In the years after her husband’s death, Boor – already an artist in her own right – signed up for an art class at UAlbany. Energized by faculty artists, like sculptors Edward Mayer and Roger Bisbing, and embraced by a diverse community of fellow student artists, Boor found an extended family and a renewed motivation to further her artistic endeavors. It also led her to make a generous gift to the art sculpture studio that, today, bears her name.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Boor Sculpture Studio, a gleaming one-story, 20,000-square-foot building dedicated to encouraging students and faculty to explore and create three-dimensional art. The building features an experimental gallery/installation area, an in-ground furnace for casting, a figure modeling room and a digital media suite.
In a 2002 interview with UAlbany Magazine, Boor – who died in 2020 – said the University deserved support “because, through its professors and its curricula, the University takes an exceptional interest in the student body. Albany has such a fine faculty and staff.
I know many of them on a personal basis, and they’re just terrific. They’re the best.”
For many of those same faculty members, the admiration was – and continues to be – mutual. “Terri was a unique force and a warm and generous individual who has left her mark on the campus and on the people who knew and worked with her,” said Ed Mayer, the now-retired professor who mentored and befriended Boor more than three decades ago.
In addition to the major naming gift in 2002, Boor also donated numerous personal works of sculpture to the University, many of which are on display throughout the campuses. Boor’s artwork, however, is not the only way her presence is still felt at the University: She endowed a sculpture fellowship; created the Terry Cosma Boor Sculpture Prize; and has underwritten a visiting sculptor fund. With her passing in 2020, Terri Boor bequeathed a generous gift to ensure that a passion and love of pursuing the arts lives on at UAlbany; it’s something that is inspiring the next generation of artists.
“The Boor provides us with an amazing abundance of traditional fabrication facilities,” said Gracelee Lawrence, assistant visiting professor of sculpture. She noted that planned enhancements will empower students to “imagine a wider breadth of possibilities that will undoubtedly facilitate greater work, merging the future and the past.”
Like Terri’s loving pledge to her husband, it’s a promise worth keeping.
By Paul A. Miller '21
Terri Boor’s husband persuaded her to make him a promise: She was to continue pursuing her love of the arts even after his death. When he passed away in 1978, she kept that loving promise and, in the process, transformed the University at Albany.
In the years after her husband’s death, Boor – already an artist in her own right – signed up for an art class at UAlbany. Energized by faculty artists, like sculptors Edward Mayer and Roger Bisbing, and embraced by a diverse community of fellow student artists, Boor found an extended family and a renewed motivation to further her artistic endeavors. It also led her to make a generous gift to the art sculpture studio that, today, bears her name.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Boor Sculpture Studio, a gleaming one-story, 20,000-square-foot building dedicated to encouraging students and faculty to explore and create three-dimensional art. The building features an experimental gallery/installation area, an in-ground furnace for casting, a figure modeling room and a digital media suite.
In a 2002 interview with UAlbany Magazine, Boor – who died in 2020 – said the University deserved support “because, through its professors and its curricula, the University takes an exceptional interest in the student body. Albany has such a fine faculty and staff.
I know many of them on a personal basis, and they’re just terrific. They’re the best.”
For many of those same faculty members, the admiration was – and continues to be – mutual. “Terri was a unique force and a warm and generous individual who has left her mark on the campus and on the people who knew and worked with her,” said Ed Mayer, the now-retired professor who mentored and befriended Boor more than three decades ago.
In addition to the major naming gift in 2002, Boor also donated numerous personal works of sculpture to the University, many of which are on display throughout the campuses. Boor’s artwork, however, is not the only way her presence is still felt at the University: She endowed a sculpture fellowship; created the Terry Cosma Boor Sculpture Prize; and has underwritten a visiting sculptor fund. With her passing in 2020, Terri Boor bequeathed a generous gift to ensure that a passion and love of pursuing the arts lives on at UAlbany; it’s something that is inspiring the next generation of artists.
“The Boor provides us with an amazing abundance of traditional fabrication facilities,” said Gracelee Lawrence, assistant visiting professor of sculpture. She noted that planned enhancements will empower students to “imagine a wider breadth of possibilities that will undoubtedly facilitate greater work, merging the future and the past.”
Like Terri’s loving pledge to her husband, it’s a promise worth keeping.
