John and Sage Cowles resisted when Artspace Projects first asked for permission to rename the Shubert Center for Dance.
"They insisted the whole effort needed to be re-branded, and the question was, what name do you use?" said John Cowles. "They kept coming back to us and said, 'We want to use your name.'"
The Cowles Center for Dance joins the Cowles Conservatory at the Walker Sculpture Garden and the Jane Sage Cowles Softball Stadium at the University of Minnesota as visible landmarks of these lifelong philanthropists whose support has been felt at most of the large Twin Cities arts organizations.
"We don't need to have our names on more things," John said to a reporter last summer when Artspace announced the name change at a gala honoring the couple.
In the end, he went along with the request.
"If the name Cowles is applicable, it's because of Sage," he said. "Lots of people have contributed a lot of money and worked hard, but none has the record of achievement in dance."
John and Sage Cowles have long indulged the idea that wealth and civic prominence require an individual to give back to a community. While editor of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, he spearheaded the effort in the early 1960s to lure Tyrone Guthrie to the Twin Cities to establish his namesake theater, and he remains one of eight lifetime directors there. He also sat on the boards of Walker Art Center and the Minnesota Orchestra.
Sage Cowles studied dance with Martha Graham in the 1940s and formed a lifelong friendship with the late choreographer Merce Cunningham. Sage still serves on Cunningham's board of directors. In 2008, the couple helped fund a historic production of Cunningham's "Ocean" in a granite quarry near St. Cloud, Minn.
