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The North Carolina Museum of Art is an art museum that houses the art collections of North Carolina
North Carolina

North Carolina is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Seaboard in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north....
. It is located in Raleigh
Raleigh, North Carolina

Raleigh is the Capital of the state of North Carolina and the List of North Carolina county seats of Wake County, North Carolina. Raleigh is known as the ?City of Oaks? for its many oaks....
, North Carolina
North Carolina

North Carolina is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Seaboard in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north....
 and 70% of its budget is from private funds collected by the NC Museum of Art Foundation.

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.






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The North Carolina Museum of Art is an art museum that houses the art collections of North Carolina
North Carolina

North Carolina is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Seaboard in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north....
. It is located in Raleigh
Raleigh, North Carolina

Raleigh is the Capital of the state of North Carolina and the List of North Carolina county seats of Wake County, North Carolina. Raleigh is known as the ?City of Oaks? for its many oaks....
, North Carolina
North Carolina

North Carolina is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Seaboard in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north....
 and 70% of its budget is from private funds collected by the NC Museum of Art Foundation.

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
New York

The State of New York is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic States and Northeastern United States regions of the United States and is the nation's List of U.S....
 architects Thomas Phifer and Partners, is to be completed in 2009.

The museum has a 449-seat open-air amphitheatre
Amphitheatre

An amphitheatre is an open-air venue for spectator sports, concerts, rallies, or theatrical performances. There are two similar, but distinct types of amphitheatres: Ancient amphitheatres, built by the ancient Rome, were large central performance spaces surrounded by ascending seating, and were commonly used for spectator sports; these comp...
 in which concerts and live performances are held. The museum hosts several performances a year, and has featured such artists as Doc Watson
Doc Watson

Arthel Lane "Doc" Watson is an United States guitar player, songwriter and singer of Bluegrass music, American folk music, country music, blues and gospel music....
, Los Lobos
Los Lobos

Los Lobos are an United States rock band. They are 3-time Grammy Award winners. Their music is influenced by rock and roll, Tejano music, country music, folk music, R&B, blues and traditional Spanish and Mexican music such as boleros and norte?o s....
, and Allen Toussaint
Allen Toussaint

File:AllenToussaintFeb07.jpgAllen Toussaint, , is an United States musician, songwriter and record producer.One of the most influential figures in New Orleans R&B, many of Toussaint's songs have become familiar through their numerous cover versions, including "Working in the Coalmine", "Ride Your Pony", "Brickyard Blues", "Get Out Of My L...
.

Permanent collection

The permanent collection spans more than 5,000 years, from ancient Egypt
Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
 to the present and includes over 5,000 works of art.

Ancient collection

The ancient collection holds Egyptian funerary art
Funerary art

Funerary art is any work of art forming or placed in a repository for the remains of the death. Tomb is a general term for the repository, while grave goods are objects—other than the primary human remains—which have been placed inside....
, including two Egyptian coffins, and sculpture
Sculpture

Sculpture is Three-dimensional space artwork created by shaping or combining hard and or plastic material, sound, and or text and or light, commonly Stone sculpture , metal, glass, or wood....
 and vase
Vase

The vase is an open container, often used to hold cut flowers. It can be made from a number of materials including ceramics and glass art. The vase is often decorated and thus used to extend the beauty of its contents....
 painting from the Greek
Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
 and Roman
Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
 worlds. It also includes works from ancient civilizations of Mexico
Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federalism constitutionalism republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of Mexico....
, South America
South America

South America is the southern continent of the Americas, situated entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere....
, Central America
Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica or Meso-America is a region and cultural area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Honduras and Nicaragua, within which a number of pre-Columbian society flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries....
, Peru
Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
 and Costa Rica
Costa Rica

Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the east and south, the Pacific Ocean to the west and south and the Caribbean Sea to the east....
.

African collection

The Africa
Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
n collection consists of African art
African art

African art constitutes one of the most diverse legacies on earth. Though many casual observers tend to generalize "traditional" African art, the continent is full of peoples, societies, and civilizations, each with a unique visual special culture....
 from the 19th and 20th centuries including objects made of wood
Wood

Wood is an organic material; in the strict sense wood is produced as secondary xylem in the stems of woody plants, notably trees but also shrubs, etc....
, terracotta, cast metals
Casting

In metalworking, casting involves pouring a liquid metal into a Mold_, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then is allowed to solidify....
, textiles, and ivory
Ivory

File:Ivory decoration.jpgIvory is formed from dentine and constitutes the bulk of the teeth and tusks of animals such as the elephant, hippopotamus, walrus, mammoth and narwhal....
.

European collection

Works by masters of European painting
Western painting

The history of Western painting represents a continuous, though disrupted, tradition from classical antiquity. Until the mid 19th century it was primarily concerned with Representational art and Classical antiquity modes of production, after which time more Modern art, Abstract art and Conceptual art forms gained favor....
 and sculpture
Sculpture

Sculpture is Three-dimensional space artwork created by shaping or combining hard and or plastic material, sound, and or text and or light, commonly Stone sculpture , metal, glass, or wood....
, covering the Renaissance
Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
 through impressionism
Impressionism

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists art exhibition their art publicly in the 1860s....
. Includes works by Giotto
Giotto

Giotto may refer to:* Giotto di Bondone an Italian painter.* Giotto mission, an European Space Agency space mission for the observation of Comet Halley...
, Sandro Botticelli
Sandro Botticelli

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli or Il Botticello was an Italy Painting of the Florentine school during the Early Renaissance ....
, Raphael
Raphael

Raphael Sanzio, usually known by his first name alone was an Italy Painting and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings and drawings....
, Anthony van Dyck
Anthony van Dyck

Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque painting who became the leading court painter in England. He is most famous for his portraits of Charles I of England and his family and court, painted with a relaxed elegance that was to be the dominant influence on English school of painting for the next 150 years....
, Peter Paul Rubens
Peter Paul Rubens

Peter Paul Rubens was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality....
, Antonio Canova
Antonio Canova

Antonio Canova was a Republic of Venice sculpture who became famous for his marble sculptures that delicately rendered nudity flesh. The epitome of the neoclassicism style, his work marked a return to Classicism refinement after the theatrical excesses of Baroque sculpture....
, and Claude Monet
Claude Monet

Claude Monet also known as Oscar-Claude Monet or Claude Oscar Monet was a founder of French impressionism painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting....
.

Modern collection

Includes works by William T. Williams
William T. Williams

William T. Williams was born in Cross Creek, North Carolina, United States. He received a BFA degree from Pratt Institute in 1966 and studied at The Skowhegan School of Art....
, Marsden Hartley
Marsden Hartley

Marsden Hartley was an American Modernism painter and poet in the early 20th century. Hartley was born in Lewiston, Maine, USA. He began his art training at the Cleveland Institute of Art after moving to Cleveland, Ohio in 1892....
, Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American artist.Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Georgia O'Keeffe received widespread recognition for her technical contributions as well as challenging the boundaries of modern American artistic style....
, Franz Kline
Franz Kline

Franz Kline was an American painter mainly associated with the Abstract Expressionism painters who were centered, geographically, around New York, and temporally, in the 1940s and 1950s; but not limited to that setting....
, Frank Stella
Frank Stella

Frank Stella is an United States Painting and printmaker. He is a significant figure in minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.He was born in Malden, Massachusetts....
, John Biggers, Jacob Lawrence
Jacob Lawrence

Jacob Lawrence was an African American Painting; he was married to fellow artist Gwendolyn Knight. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", though by his own account the primary influence was not so much French art as the shapes and colors of Harlem....
, Thomas Hart Benton
Thomas Hart Benton (painter)

Thomas Hart Benton was an American Painting and muralist. Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, he was at the forefront of the American scene painting art movement....
, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a Germany Expressionism Painting and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Br?cke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th century art....
, Paul Delvaux
Paul Delvaux

Paul Delvaux was a Belgium Painting, famous for his surrealist paintings with female nudes....
, Henry Moore
Henry Moore

Henry Spencer Moore Order of Merit Companion of Honour Federation of British Artists was an English artist and Sculpture. He is best known for his abstract art monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as Public art....
, Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer is a Germany Painting and sculptor. He studied with Joseph Beuys during the 1970s. His works incorporate materials like straw, wiktionary:ash, clay, lead, and shellac....
 and Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter is a Germany artist....
. 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
Silver

Silver is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal....
, gold
Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and atomic number 79. It is a highly sought-after precious metal, having been used as money, as a store of value, in jewelry, in sculpture, and for ornamentation since the beginning of recorded history....
 and ivory.

Museum Park

In addition to the indoor museum, a area called the Museum Park holds art installations spread throughout trails, streams, and open spaces. Visitors are encouraged to explore art and ecology
Ecology

Ecology is the science study of the distribution and Abundance of life and the interactions between organisms and their nature environment ....
 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
North Carolina State University

North Carolina State University at Raleigh is a public university, coeducational, extensive research university located in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States....
 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

Julie Mehretu
Julie Mehretu

Julie Mehretu is an United States artist best known for her densely-layered abstract paintings and prints. Raised in East Lansing, Michigan, Mehretu received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan and did a junior year abroad at University Cheik Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal, then attended the Rhode Islan...
: City Sitings, August 17, 2008 - November 30, 2008.

Modern America Paintings from the Bequest of Fannie and Alan Leslie
November 25, 2007 - Fall 2009
Free

30 paintings from the Leslies’ esteemed collection of modern American art
American Art

American Art Released on May 8, 2007 on Doghouse Records. It is the debut album of the band Weatherbox. The album received critical acclaim from several sources including underground music distribution company, Smartpunk, who used these words to describe the music's genre and style ...
. Modern American Paintings showcases 13 paintings including major works by leading Southern California
Southern California

Southern California, or So Cal, is defined as the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its population centers on the cities of Los Angeles, California, San Diego, California, San Bernardino, California, and Riverside, California....
 modernists Stanton Macdonald-Wright
Stanton Macdonald-Wright

Stanton MacDonald-Wright , was a United States of America Abstract art Painting. One of his significant achievements was co-founding the Synchromism movement in 1913....
, Hans Burkhardt
Hans Burkhardt

Hans Gustav Burkhardt was a Swiss American abstract expressionism. In 1924 he emigrated from Basel, Switzerland to New York. From 1925 to 1928 he attended the Cooper Union....
, and Lee Mullican
Lee Mullican

Lee Mullican was a Painting and art teacher, and an influential member of the Dynaton Movement. He is the father of New York City based artist Matt Mullican....
.

Previous exhibitions

  • 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
    Photography

    Photography is the process, activity and art of creating still or moving by recording radiation on a sensitive medium, such as a photographic film, or an ....
    , paintings, and sculpture by artists of diverse national and cultural origins.
  • Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism
    Impressionism

    Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists art exhibition their art publicly in the 1860s....
    , October 21, 2007 - January 13, 2008. Spanning 1850s to the early twentieth century, works by French artists such as Gustave Courbet
    Gustave Courbet

    Jean D?sir? Gustave Courbet was a France Painting who led the realism movement in 19th-century French painting....
    , Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Claude Monet
    Claude Monet

    Claude Monet also known as Oscar-Claude Monet or Claude Oscar Monet was a founder of French impressionism painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting....
     as well as Americans Childe Hassam
    Childe Hassam

    Frederick Childe Hassam was a prominent and prolific American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressionism to American collectors, dealers, and the museums....
     and John Singer Sargent
    John Singer Sargent

    John Singer Sargent was the most successful portrait painter of his era. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings....
    . Showcases an array of impressionistic landscapes. Organized by the Brooklyn Museum
    Brooklyn Museum

    The Brooklyn Museum, located at 200 Eastern Parkway , in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, is the second-largest art museum in New York City, and one of the largest in the United States....
    .
  • Temples and Tombs: Treasures of Egyptian Art from The British Museum
    British Museum

    The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture situated in London. Its collections, which number more than 7 million Object , are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginning to the present....
    , 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
    Normandy

    Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is situated along the coast of France south of the English Channel between Brittany and Picardy and comprises territory in northern France and the Channel Islands....
    , 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
    Rembrandt

    Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Netherlands Painting and etching. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in History of the Netherlands....
    's Etchings, Selections from the John Villarino Collection, March 5 - May 28, 2006.
  • The Potter's Eye: Art and Tradition in North Carolina Pottery
    Pottery

    Pottery is the ceramic ware made by potters. Major types of pottery include earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain. The places where such wares are made are called potteries....
    , October 30, 2005 - March 19, 2006.
  • Crosscurrents: Art, Craft, and Design in North Carolina, September 25, 2005 - January 8, 2006.
  • Shadow Boxes
    Shadow box

    A shadow box is an enclosed case used in dioramas with a scene or object, that has been specially designed to let light pass through from only one angle, so that objects within are less susceptible to damage from light....
    : Collages of Experience and Memory, August 15 - December 11, 2005.
  • Fusion: Contemporary Glass Art
    Glass art

    Glass art and Glass sculpture is the use of glass as an artistic medium to produce sculptures or two-dimensional artworks. Specific approaches include stained glass, working glass in a torch flame , glass beadmaking, glass casting, Fused glass, and, most notably, glass blowing....
     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
    Hudson River school

    The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century United States art movement by a group of landscape art Paintings, whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism....
    , From the Collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum
    Wadsworth Atheneum

    The Wadsworth Atheneum is the oldest public art museum in the United States, with significant holdings of French and American Impressionist paintings, Hudson River School landscapes, modernist masterpieces and contemporary works, as well as extensive holdings in early American furniture and decorative arts....
     Museum of Art, June 6 - August 29, 2004.
  • Brushes With Life: Art, Artists And Mental Illness
    Mental illness

    A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern that occurs in an individual and is thought to cause distress or disability that is not expected as part of normal development or culture....
    , ended August 15, 2004.
  • Augustus Saint-Gaudens: American Sculptor of the Gilded Age
    Gilded Age

    The Gilded Age was a time period when some activity or skill was at its peak. The wealth polarization derived primarily from industrial and population expansion.The businessmen of the Second Industrial Revolution created industrial towns and cities in the Northeastern United States with new factories, and contributed to the creation of an ethnica...
    , 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
    Rubens

    Rubens is often used to mean Peter Paul Rubens , Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:*Paul Rubens , co-lyricist of Florodora*Alma Rubens , American actor...
     and Rembrandt
    Rembrandt

    Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Netherlands Painting and etching. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in History of the Netherlands....
    , October 13, 2002 - January 5, 2003.
  • Selections from The Birds of America
    Birds of America

    Birds of America may refer to:*Birds of America , a book by John James Audubon*Birds of America , a 2008 film directed by Craig Lucas....
     by John James Audubon
    John James Audubon

    John James Audubon was a French people-United States ornithology, natural history, Hunting#United States, and Painting. He painted, catalogued, and described the birds of North America in a form far superior to what had gone before....
    , July 14 -December 1, 2002.
  • The Reverend McKendree Robbins Long
    McKendree Long

    McKendree Long was an United States Religious minister and Painting.Educated at Horner Military Academy in Oxford, North Carolina and at Davidson College, he went on to attend classes at the Art Students League of New York in New York City, New York....
    : Picture Painter of the Apocalypse
    Apocalypse

    Apocalypse is a term applied to the disclosure to certain privileged persons of something hidden from the majority of humankind. Today the term is often used to refer to the Doomsday event, which may be a shortening of the phrase apokalupsis eschaton which literally means "revelation at the end of the ?on, or age"....
    , April 7 - August 25, 2002.
  • Empire of the Sultans: Ottoman
    Ottoman

    A term used to refer to the citizens of the Ottoman Empire after 1839, when the Tanzimat edict starting a period of reforms was declared . The term was started to be used more commonly especially after the empire officially became a constitutional monarchy in 1876....
     Art from the Khalili Collection, May 19 - July 28, 2002.
  • Toulouse-Lautrec: Master of the Moulin Rouge
    Moulin Rouge

    Moulin Rouge is a cabaret built in 1889 by Joseph Oller, who also owned the Paris Olympia. Close to Montmartre in the Paris red-light district of Pigalle on Boulevard de Clichy in the 18?me arrondissement, Paris, it is marked by the facsimile of a red windmill on its roof....
     From the Collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art
    Baltimore Museum of Art

    The Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, was founded in 1914. It is located between the Charles Village, Baltimore and Remington, Baltimore neighborhoods, immediately adjacent to the Homewood campus of Johns Hopkins University, though the museum is an independent institution not affiliated with the University....
    , November 11, 2001 - February 17, 2002.
  • Picasso, Braque, Léger
    Fernand Léger

    Joseph Fernand Henri L?ger was a France painting, sculpture, and film director....
    : Paintings From the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Julian H. Robertson, June 10 - September 9, 2001.
  • Xu Bing
    Xu Bing

    Xu Bing is a China-born artist, resident in the United States since 1990....
    : Reading Landscape, April 29 - August 5, 2001.
  • Stanton Macdonald-Wright
    Stanton Macdonald-Wright

    Stanton MacDonald-Wright , was a United States of America Abstract art Painting. One of his significant achievements was co-founding the Synchromism movement in 1913....
     and Synchromism
    Synchromism

    Synchromism was an art movement founded in 1912 by United States of America artists Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Morgan Russell.Synchromism is based on the idea that color and sound are similar phenomena, and that the colors in a painting can be orchestrated in the same harmonious way that a composer arranges notes in a symphony....
    , March 4 - July 1, 2001.
  • Is Seeing Believing?, January 14 - April 1, 2001.
  • Ansel Adams
    Ansel Adams

    Ansel Easton Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West and primarily Yosemite National Park....
    , 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
North Carolina General Assembly

The North Carolina General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of North Carolina. The General Assembly drafts and legislates the state laws of North Carolina, also known as the General Statutes....
, within two years of the establishment of the Ackland Art Museum
Ackland Art Museum

The Ackland Art Museum is a museum and academic unit of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was founded through the bequest of William Hayes Ackland to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill....
 in Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill

Chapel Hill may refer to:*Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a town in the United States, or**the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a major university within the town...
.

The museum's director and foundation were at the forefront of a 2008 controversy involving North Carolina Governor Mike Easley
Mike Easley

Michael Francis Easley was the governor of the United States of North Carolina from 2001 to 2009. He is a United States Democratic Party and was North Carolina's second Roman Catholicism governor....
, who has defended the use of taxpayer dollars for his and his wife Mary's trips overseas. Mary Easley took two trips out of the country to promote the North Carolina Museum of Art, one to France
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
 and one to Russia
Russia

Russia , or the Russian Federation , is a list of countries spanning more than one continent country extending over much of northern Eurasia....
 and Estonia
Estonia

Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Finland across the Gulf of Finland, to the west by Sweden across the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by the Russia ....
. 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. Critics called the trips overly lavish in a time of economic downturn for the state. 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."

Although the director of the North Carolina Museum of Art
North Carolina Museum of Art

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, North Carolina and 70% of its budget is from private funds collected by the NC Museum of Art Foundation....
 defended Mary Easley's trips as possibly helping the museum to receive loaned art items from The Hermitage
The Hermitage

The Hermitage is a historical plantation and museum located in Davidson County, Tennessee, Tennessee, United States, east of downtown Nashville, Tennessee....
 in St. Petersburg, the Raleigh News and Observer noted that no results of the trips were yet evident as of July 2008. State auditor Les Merritt
Les Merritt

Leslie Merritt is a United States Republican Party politician from the United States state of North Carolina and a former North Carolina State Auditor, a position to which he was North Carolina Council of State election, 2004....
 released a report October 31, 2008 that found that 40% of the overseas charges were "unreasonable or unallowable."

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. In Russia, hundreds of dollars were charged to the state for both caviar
Caviar

Caviar is the Food processing, salted roe of certain species of fish, most notably the sturgeon and the salmon . It is commercially marketed worldwide as a delicacy and is eaten as a garnish or a spread; for example, with hors d'?uvres....
 and alcohol purchases. $45,000 in private funds from the NC Art Museum's foundation were used to reimburse the state following the auditor's finding.

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