Secrest Artists Series Records
The Secrest Artists Series was endowed by Marion Secrest in the 1980s. The Secrest Artists Series brings dozens of world-class performers to Wake Forest University. Secrest's endowment allows for students, faculty, and staff to attend for these events for free while community members can buy tickets that are subsidized by the endowment.
Biographical and Historical Note
The Secrest Artists Series has a long and distinguished history of presenting performing artists of national and international reputation to the Wake Forest campus and Triad community. Considered as education and entertainment of the highest quality, such celebrated performers as Itzhak Perlman, Christopher Parkening, Ravi Shankar, Doc Severinsen and his Big Band, Denyce Graves, and the National Symphony with Leonard Slatkin have appeared on the Secrest Series. Each event is usually accompanied by a pre-concert talk or a residency activity by the artist.
Endowed in 1987 by Marion Secrest, a local performing arts patron, in honor of her deceased husband, Willis Secrest, the future of the series is guaranteed. The mission statement of the series states that the best of the established artists in the performing arts and the most promising of the new will appear without admission charge to the students, faculty, and staff of Wake Forest University. This fact alone distinguishes this series from other college and university performing arts series. It is assumed that attendance at these first class artistic events is part of the cultural education and enhancement of students at Wake Forest University. Tickets are available to the public at subsidized prices. Performances take place in the Scales Fine Arts Center or in Wait Chapel.
Marion Secrest was born in 1906 to a father who was both a physician and a botanist; she was also the first of four children. In 1910, the family moved to Winston-Salem, NC, from Wisconsin in search of a more temperate climate. Secrest would spend the rest of her 103 years in Winston-Salem, save for the short time she was at the University of Wisconsin, earning degrees in French and English. She made her first sizable donation to Wake Forest University in the late 1980s, endowing the Secrest Artists Series.
Collection Overview
The Secrest Artists Series contains committee agendas, brochures and schedules, budgets, correspondence, letters, newspaper clippings, photographs, and other materials that document the program's history and seasons.
Administrative Information
- Publication Information
- Paige Horton, Charles Huffstetler, Rebecca Petersen, 2014
- Revision Description
- Revised by Kate Trathen, new materials added and subject headings added, 2026 April
- Conditions Governing Access Note
- This collection is open for use.
- Copyright Statement
- The nature of the WFU Z.Smith Reynolds Library Special Collections and Archives means that copyright or other information about restrictions may be difficult or even impossible to determine despite reasonable efforts. The Archives and Special Collections of ZSR Library claims only physical ownership of most materials. The materials from our collections are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study, pursuant to the U.S. Copyright Law. The user must assume full responsibility for any use of the materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials. Any materials used for academic research or otherwise should be fully credited with the source.
- Preferred Citation Note
- Secrest Artists Series, RG 16.32, Z. Smith Reynolds Library Special Collections and Archives, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA.