Lincoln University will unveil the Dorothy E. Steward Art Gallery with a public ceremony March 10.
In September, the LU Board of Curators named the campus gallery on the second floor of Richardson Auditorium after Steward after awarding her an honorary doctor of humane letters degree.
She died in 2020 at the age of 92. Before her death, her son approached Lincoln about documenting her life growing up in segregated Clinton, Missouri.
"It was during that conversation that Mrs. Steward informed the university that if she had gone to college, she would have wanted to go to school at Lincoln," University President John Moseley previously told the News Tribune. "So we deemed it appropriate to name this space after her because her interest was the arts."
Dorothy Steward is the mother of David Steward, the founder and chairman of St. Louis-based IT provider World Wide Technology. He has a net worth of $6 billion and was one of 13 Black billionaires worldwide in 2019, according to Forbes.
David Steward has donated about $250,000 to Lincoln over the past few years, Moseley said. And in 2015, the historically Black university granted him an honorary doctor of science degree.
Moseley said he didn't have any reservations about naming a part of campus after someone who wasn't formally connected to the university.
"For us, it captures the spirit of Lincoln and the impact that Lincoln had on the state pre-dating all of us," he said, noting that Lincoln was at one point the only educational opportunity for Black Americans in Missouri.
The gallery's unveiling ceremony is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. March 10 on the second floor of Richardson Auditorium. It is free and open to the public.
Outside of Lincoln, Dorothy Steward's name is preserved through the University of Missouri-St. Louis Harold and Dorothy Steward Center for Jazz and a music practice room at the University of Central Missouri.