news-record.com

WINSTON-SALEM (MCT) — The new downtown arts center will be named after Milton Rhodes, the president and chief executive of the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County.

The Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts will open with a celebration Sept. 10 and a series of free events for the community Sept. 11 and 12.

Rhodes has served the organization twice. He was president from 1971 to 1985, when he left Winston-Salem to run the American Council for the Arts, now Americans for the Arts, a nonprofit group that works to advance the arts in the United States.

He returned in 2004, and during his second stint, Rhodes has led a $26 million campaign, the centerpiece of which is the transformation of both the Sawtooth Center and the old AC Delco building into an arts center, which will include the Sawtooth School for Visual Art, galleries and the Hanesbrands Theatre.

Meanwhile, work continues on the new arts center.

Spruce Street, which will become the entrance of the renovated center, has been closed since early June as crews work on a parking lot. It could open to traffic next week.