the art of giving RON SHELP
Ron Shelp in UGA’s student newspaper, the Red & Black, during the early 1960s.
president ever at the age of 32. He traveled the world in that role, especially South and Central America, where his love of art was reawakened. In 1982, he and June Mueller Peno married and began collecting art together, partially due to the influence of renowned Atlanta collector and dealer William Arnett (AB ’63). Through Arnett, they began collecting works by self- taught or vernacular artists, which formed the basis of the traveling exhibition “Testimony: Vernacular Art of the African American South” from 2000 to 2004. “We were drawn to this art because we [felt] it [was] dra- matic, moving and wide-ranging,” Shelp said. “You find everything in it from tough, forceful portraits and icons to symbolic narratives to subtle abstractions. But, equally important, this art has a message that speaks to June and me, as Southerners. Even the most abstract of these works tells us something about what the world looks like through the eyes of people who grew up in the segregated South and lived through the civil rights movements and the turbulent times that followed.” Shelp reconnected with UGA in 2003 and he quickly be - came involved with the museum, making gifts of art from his collection from 2008 to 2020, including Thornton Dial’s large painting “Spirit of Grand Central Station— The Man That Helped the Handicapped” (which Dial said was a portrait of Shelp) and Charlie Lucas’ found-metal sculpture “Twister,” which greets visitors at the muse- um’s side entrance. His focus on vernacular art seemed to mirror his own humble upbringings and the sense that those didn’t define one’s scope of possibilities. Shelp died on August 15, 2021, surrounded by his family. He is survived by June and their two sons, Kent and Rus- sell. He left behind a legacy of donations to the University of Georgia totaling more than $650,000, including the value of works of art. The Shelps were generous donors around the country, giving works of art to the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the American Folk Art Museum, the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art at Colorado State University, the Smithsonian Amer - ican Art Museum, the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College and the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ron re - served his greatest generosity, however, for the university that changed his life, setting up a planned gift to establish an acquisitions endowment at the museum that will allow it to buy works of art to inspire and educate UGA students of the future, showing them the vast possibilities that await them, no matter where they started.
Who would’ve thought that Ron Shelp, with humble beginnings as a traveling fruitcake salesman and no plans to go to college, would one day leave a generous gift to the Georgia Museum of Art in his will? His story is a reminder that our greatest gifts often come from the most unlikely beginnings. Ron Shelp (AB ’64) was born in 1941 in Cartersville, Georgia, to Willie and Clarence Mulkey and spent his early years there. After his parents di- vorced, his mother married Sherwood Shelp, an army recruiter whose last name Ron took as his own. The family traveled frequently, and after Ron graduated high school, there was no expectation that he would pursue higher education. Instead, he ran a cotton gin, worked as a bill collector, served as a clerk and typist for the FBI and sold fruitcake for Benson’s Bakery. None of those jobs was particularly inspiring though, so when Edmonds Martin, his former high school principal in Cartersville, told him he needed to go to college, Shelp listened. Martin wouldn’t take no for an answer. He packed Shelp into his car, drove him to the University of Georgia, got him enrolled in classes and even set up loans for him. Martin also stayed in touch and made sure that Shelp finished his schooling. Martin did the same for more than 100 students, Shelp said, with the same persistence. He was intent on mak- ing a difference in each of their lives. Shelp’s first day of college was the day Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes integrated UGA, he said in an interview. He saw the demonstra - tions against integration and refused to take part in them as a believer in equity from his early years. He dove into university life fully and became a passionate debater and co-captain of the debate team. He debated even more as a member of the Demosthenian Society and participant in the honor societies for Phi Kappa Phi, Blue Key and Omicron Delta Kappa. He also, crucially, took an art appreciation class, a required course to grad- uate at the time, and he even got an A. But the value of that class went well beyond a letter grade or basic acquired knowledge. That class and his love of UGA planted seeds that would bear fruit nearly 60 years later. After graduating from UGA with a degree in history and political science, Shelp went on to a master’s degree at Johns Hopkins’ School of Ad- vanced International Studies. He also worked for former Georgia Senator Richard B. Russell Jr. (LLB ’18) before finding his way to American International Group, a multinational finance and insurance corporation. Shelp worked at AIG for more than a decade, becoming its youngest vice
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