Honorary Degrees of Retiring Faculty
E. Dane Purdo, Professor of Art, 1991
"Dane Purdo, your teaching career began 36 years ago when you joined the Milwaukee-Downer faculty as both studio artist and art historian after graduating from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. A Fulbright grant in 1956-1957 gave you time to pursue with intensity your explorations in silversmithing at the Royal College of Art in London, where you became the first American to register his hallmark at Goldsmith Hall. Full of enthusiasm, you returned to Milwaukee-Downer College to teach your students the finer points of metalworking, ceramics, and art history. The merger of Milwaukee-Downer and Lawrence in 1964 brought you to Appleton where you have continued to serve your students in the studio and classroom.
Your creativity and discipline have inspired and influenced your students at the moment and in their graduating years, and from your classes silversmiths, jewelers, designers, potters, art educators, and occupational therapists have gone into the world with a keen sense of artistic excellence and a well-honed mastery of technique.
Your work can be found in the permanent collections of the Milwaukee Art Center, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Detroit Art Institute and in numerous private collections. Your ecclesiastical and industrial commissions range from Neenah to Germany and Africa. Here at Lawrence your art will be with us always, for the ceremonial mace and batons you created of silver and rosewood have become a quintessential part of our academic processions. Dane Purdo--artist, teacher, master of the dance floor and the ski slopes, multi-faceted man given to sartorial splendor--Lawrence proudly salutes you today for your generous contributions to its humanistic enterprise.
By the authority vested in me, I now confer upon you the degree of Master of Arts, ad eundem, and admit you to its right, its privileges, and its obligations."
