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Booking Gratitude–Thank you, Linda, for your extraordinary gift

Booking Gratitude
Thank you, Linda, for your extraordinary gift

Recently the Arts Council received an incredible gift! Five hundred (or so) beautiful art books! Some are very gently used, others are brand new, and we are beyond excited to have them all in our office! We have Linda Nelson to thank for this gracious offering! What a great friend to Lansing and the arts!

A worldly woman

Linda Nelson is a lover of knowledge, receiving her B.A. from University of Pennsylvania, her M.A. from Iowa State University and her P.H.D. from Michigan State. She is a worldly woman, who spent time in Costa Rica conducting research for her doctoral dissertation and later worked there as a member of the Inter-American Institute for Agricultural Scientists. Her work then took her to Chile where she joined the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as a regional home economics advisor.

Blooming in the arts

After spending 17 years in Latin America, Linda returned to the U.S. in 1974 where she taught at MSU for 20 years. When she retired, she took up painting with watercolors and became quite accomplished. Her love of agriculture carried over to her painting, where she enjoys capturing images of the flowers from the East Lansing Farmers Market with her brush. Linda loves to travel, taking her easel with her to China, Turkey and Spain, and her goal is to paint the flowers of marketplaces all over the world.

Sharing her love through books

Recently Linda suffered a small stroke that took the vision in her right eye, and she made the decision to move from her two-story East Lansing apartment, which was filled with art books of all different shapes, sizes and genres, from art history to Japanese painting to landscape techniques and beyond. Having no room for the books in her new abode, she decided to donate them to the Arts Council, and we are so very grateful for this gift.

We look forward to seeing all of our members on Dec. 17, for camaraderie and fellowship as we share in Linda’s gift to the arts world. 

A true Spartan in every sense! Check out Linda’s Spartan Saga video!