N.C. Museum of Art 919-839-6262

The North Carolina Museum of Art houses the art collections of the State of North Carolina. These collections had their beginnings in 1947 when the North Carolina General Assembly appropriated $1 million in state funds for the purchase of works of art, making North Carolina the first state in the nation to use public funds to buy a collection of art.

The initial $1 million appropriation was used to purchase 139 European and American paintings and sculpture. The Samuel H. Kress Foundation matched the appropriation with the gift of 75 works of art in 1960, adding the Museum to its program of endowing regional museums throughout the United States with works from the Kress Collection. The Kress gift to the Museum became the largest and most important of any except that given to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

The state’s art collection spans more than 5,000 years, from ancient Egypt to the present—making it one of the premier art museums in the region. The ancient collection includes Egyptian funerary art and important examples of sculpture and vase painting from the Greek and Roman worlds. The collection of European paintings and sculpture from the Renaissance through Impressionism is internationally celebrated with important works by Giotto, Sandro Botticelli, Raphael, Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens, Antonio Canova, and Claude Monet. American art of the 18th and 19th centuries features paintings by John Singleton Copley, Thomas Cole, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and William Merritt Chase. Modern art includes major works by such American artists as Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, Franz Kline, Frank Stella, Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Murray, and Joel Shapiro. Modern European masters include Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Delvaux, Henry Moore, Anselm Kiefer, and Gerhard Richter. Galleries are also devoted to African, Ancient American, and Oceanic Art, as well as Jewish ceremonial art.

In 2005 the N.C. Museum of Art received a gift of 22 sculptures by Auguste Rodin from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation. The Museum will install the collection and establish a Rodin study center in 2008. With this gift, the Museum becomes the only Rodin repository in the South.

Exhibitions: Four changing galleries house several special exhibitions throughout the season.

Tours: Free guided tour Tuesday through Sunday at 1:30 p.m. Guided tours for youth and adult groups are provided free; to schedule, call the Museum at (919) 664-6748, at least four weeks in advance.