Mike McCue will be the guest speaker at the next meeting of the American Association of University Women in Tryon.

The program will be Monday, March 26, at 1:30 p.m. in the Tryon Presbyterian Church community room, located on Harmon Field Road. The event is free and open to the public.

McCue will speak about professional women artists in the early Tryon years. McCue’s interest in Tryon’s women who were professional artists came about in 2001, when he co-curated an art show of early professional painters who lived or worked here before World War II.

It struck him as highly unusual that half of the artists in that show were women, during a period when America’s art scene was dominated by men. Since that time, he has pursued learning about those women.

How they found Tryon, why they worked here and what their impacts were on the national art scene are some of the questions to be considered in Mike’s presentation.

Mike has been around the area for 35 years. He arrived in 1983 to run Kangaroo Golf in Columbus, where he is still working full-time as president and owner of the company.

For fun, he has researched and published books on Tryon’s artists and writers. He networks with museum curators, scholars and people throughout the nation who become aware of Tryon’s art history.

Mike has served as trustee for North Carolina Humanities Council, as treasurer of Asheville Area Arts Council and on citizen panels for National Endowment for the Arts. He is art advisor to Polk County Historical Association for their museum in Columbus.

The Tryon Chapter of AAUW meets at 1:30 every fourth Monday September through April at Tryon Presbyterian Church. The public is invited to attend.

-Submitted by Robin Rice