The Alumni Wall of Honor, a landmark work of art designed by architect Antoine Predock in collaboration with sculptor Constance DeJong, will stretch more than 200 feet along Oak Street from the corner of Oak and Washington Avenue. The structure honors the winners of the Outstanding Achievement Award, the University’s highest honor for its graduates. All winners of the award will be listed on the wall.
The design of the Alumni Wall of Honor also includes an artistic interpretation of the stars overhead on the day of the university’s founding in February 1851. Construction of the Alumni Wall of Honor is expected to be substantially complete by the end of 2004.
The Alumni Wall of Honor and the nearby Scholars Walk are gifts to the University from the University of Minnesota Foundation, the University of Minnesota Alumni Association, and the Minnesota Medical Foundation, the partnership that worked to build and now operates the McNamara Alumni Center.
The Alumni Wall of Honor and the Scholars Walk are being entirely funded through private giving, principally through the generosity of the late Carlyle E. Anderson, ’32, whose charity also made possible the recognition of major donors to the university in the McNamara Alumni Center. Anderson was among the founders of the University of Minnesota Foundation and its first president. After a distinguished business career in the Chicago area, he was awarded the university’s Outstanding Achievement Award in 1959.
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