The North Carolina Museum of Art is an art museum that houses the art collections of North Carolina. It is located in Raleigh, North Carolina and 70% of its budget is from private funds collected by the NC Museum of Art Foundation.[1]
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Museum
The museum has an extensive permanent collection which is free to visit. The museum also hosts many artistic and cultural events such as concerts and movie showings which require a separate ticket for a fee. Guided tours are offered free daily or visitors may choose an audio tour for a small fee.
Admission is free to the permanent collection, but there are charges for special exhibits and events. The museum has become the beneficiary of 22 statues by Auguste Rodin, a gift from Iris Cantor. Additionally, groundbreaking on a new $70+ million museum was celebrated in December 2006. The new museum, designed by New York architects Thomas Phifer and Partners, is to be completed in April 2010. The current galleries will temporarily close on September 8, 2009 to begin moving the artworks.
The museum has a 449-seat open-air amphitheatre in which concerts and live performances are held. The museum hosts several performances a year, and has featured such artists as Doc Watson, Los Lobos, and Allen Toussaint.
Permanent collection
The permanent collection spans more than 5,000 years, from ancient Egypt to the present and includes over 5,000 works of art.
Ancient collection
The ancient collection holds Egyptian funerary art, including two Egyptian coffins, and sculpture and vase painting from the Greek and Roman worlds. It also includes works from ancient civilizations of Mexico, South America, Central America, Peru and Costa Rica.
African collection
The African collection consists of African art from the 19th and 20th centuries including objects made of wood, terracotta, cast metals, textiles, and ivory.
European collection
Works by masters of European painting and sculpture, covering the Renaissance through impressionism. Includes works by Giotto, Sandro Botticelli, Raphael, Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens, Antonio Canova, and Claude Monet.
Modern collection
Includes works by Richard Pousette-Dart, William T. Williams, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe, Franz Kline, Frank Stella, John Biggers, Jacob Lawrence, Thomas Hart Benton, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Delvaux, Henry Moore, Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter. The collection spans 1910-2000.
Judaic collection
The NCMA is home to one of only two galleries in the United States devoted to Jewish ceremonial art, spaning the 18th through the 20th century. includes works of precious materials such as silver, gold and ivory.
Museum Park
In addition to the indoor museum, a 164-acre (0.66 km2) area called the Museum Park holds art installations spread throughout trails, streams, and open spaces. Visitors are encouraged to explore art and ecology together. The park was developed on a tract of land that was formerly a state youth prison and farm. Park planning is done by the museum and managed in cooperation with North Carolina State University College of Natural Resources through the Partnership for Art and Ecology.
Exhibitions
In addition to the permanent collection, the museum generally has at least one travelling or temporary exhibition on display.
Current exhibitions
Modern America Paintings from the Bequest of Fannie and Alan Leslie
November 25, 2007 - September 8, 2009
Free
30 paintings from the Leslies’ esteemed collection of modern American art. Modern American Paintings showcases 13 paintings including major works by leading Southern California modernists Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Hans Burkhardt, and Lee Mullican.
Previous exhibitions
- Julie Mehretu: City Sitings, August 17, 2008 - November 30, 2008.
- Far from Home, February 17 - July 13, 2008. Addressed the global displacement of people and populations as they relocate for economic, political, or other reasons; featured photography, paintings, and sculpture by artists of diverse national and cultural origins.
- Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism, October 21, 2007 - January 13, 2008. Spanning 1850s to the early twentieth century, works by French artists such as Gustave Courbet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Claude Monet as well as Americans Childe Hassam and John Singer Sargent. Showcases an array of impressionistic landscapes. Organized by the Brooklyn Museum.
- Temples and Tombs: Treasures of Egyptian Art from The British Museum, March 15, 2007 - July 8, 2007. Included 85 seldom-seen treasures from The British Museum’s collection of ancient Egyptian art.
- Contemporary North Carolina Photography from the Museum's Collection, September 3, 2007 - February 18, 2008.
- Revolution in Paint, September 17, 2006 - February 11, 2007.
- Monet in Normandy, October 15, 2006 - January 14, 2007.
- Common Ground: Discovering Community in 150 Years of Art, Selections from the Collection of Julia J. Norrell, May 7, 2006 - July 16, 2006.
- Sordid and Sacred: The Beggars in Rembrandt's Etchings, Selections from the John Villarino Collection, March 5 - May 28, 2006.
- The Potter's Eye: Art and Tradition in North Carolina Pottery, October 30, 2005 - March 19, 2006.
- Crosscurrents: Art, Craft, and Design in North Carolina, September 25, 2005 - January 8, 2006.
- Shadow Boxes: Collages of Experience and Memory, August 15 - December 11, 2005.
- Fusion: Contemporary Glass Art from North Carolina Collections, May 8 - August 7, 2005.
- In Focus: Contemporary Photography From The Allen G. Thomas Jr. Collection, April 3 - July 17, 2005.
- American Eden: Landscape Masterworks of the Hudson River School, From the Collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, June 6 - August 29, 2004.
- Brushes With Life: Art, Artists And Mental Illness, ended August 15, 2004.
- Augustus Saint-Gaudens: American Sculptor of the Gilded Age, February 23 - May 11, 2003.
- Accent of Africa, April 6 - August 10, 2003.
- In Memoriam: George Bireline (1923—2002), December 18, 2002 - August 3, 2003.
- Art in the Age of Rubens and Rembrandt, October 13, 2002 - January 5, 2003.
- Selections from The Birds of America by John James Audubon, July 14 -December 1, 2002.
- The Reverend McKendree Robbins Long: Picture Painter of the Apocalypse, April 7 - August 25, 2002.
- Empire of the Sultans: Ottoman Art from the Khalili Collection, May 19 - July 28, 2002.
- Toulouse-Lautrec: Master of the Moulin Rouge From the Collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art, November 11, 2001 - February 17, 2002.
- Picasso, Braque, Léger: Paintings From the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Julian H. Robertson, June 10 - September 9, 2001.
- Xu Bing: Reading Landscape, April 29 - August 5, 2001.
- Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism, March 4 - July 1, 2001.
- Is Seeing Believing?, January 14 - April 1, 2001.
- Ansel Adams, October 8, 2000 - January 7, 2001.
- Auguste Rodin, April 16 - August 13, 2000.
History
The museum was established in the 1940s through a $1 million grant for an art collection from the North Carolina General Assembly, within two years of the establishment of the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill.[2]
The museum's director and foundation were at the forefront of a 2008 controversy involving North Carolina Governor Mike Easley, who has defended the use of taxpayer dollars for his and his wife Mary's trips overseas.[3] Mary Easley took two trips out of the country to promote the North Carolina Museum of Art, one to France and one to Russia and Estonia. These "cultural exchanges" came at a cost of $109,000, including $27,000 for rental of a French Mercedes and almost $9,000 in hotel and Monet tour costs, months after the North Carolina Museum of Art's Monet exhibit had ended.[3] Critics called the trips overly lavish in a time of economic downturn for the state.[3] Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger said: "To have a 24-hour chauffered limosine sees to me to be a bit much. If you're in private business and you waste money like that, you're probably going to be let go."[3]
Although the director of the North Carolina Museum of Art defended Mary Easley's trips as possibly helping the museum to receive loaned art items from The Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the Raleigh News and Observer noted that no results of the trips were yet evident as of July 2008.[4] State auditor Les Merritt released a report October 31, 2008 that found that 40% of the overseas charges were "unreasonable or unallowable."[1]
Merritt found that the $27,000, on-call chauffeured SUV often followed Mary Easley's tour bus through the countryside rather than serving as her transportation.[1] In Russia, hundreds of dollars were charged to the state for both caviar and alcohol purchases.[1] $45,000 in private funds from the NC Art Museum's foundation were used to reimburse the state following the auditor's finding.[1]
References
- ^ a b c d e "Audit tears into trips to Europe". Raleigh News and Observer. 2008-10-31. http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1276054.html. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
- ^ History of the Ackland, Ackland Art Museum, http://www.ackland.org/visit/history.html, retrieved 2008-11-30
- ^ a b c d "Easley defends cost of overseas travel". WRAL-TV. 2008-06-30. http://www.wral.com/news/state/story/3130945/. Retrieved 2008-10-27.
- ^ "Mary Easley trips cost state $109,000". News and Observer. 2008-07-01. http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1126322.html. Retrieved 2008-10-27.
External links
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