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The North Carolina Museum of Art— first major art museum collection in the country to be formed by state legislation and funding—is in the final stages of its expansion. The centerpiece of the expansion initiative is a new 127,000-square-foot, light-filled building designed by New York-based architects Thomas Phifer and Partners. The single-story structure, surrounded by sculpture gardens and beautiful pools was created specifically to showcase the Museum’s outstanding permanent collection of more than 5,000 objects spanning antiquity to the present day.
On the occasion of the expansion, the Museum has acquired more than 100 new works of art. Representing commissions, gifts, and purchases, the new works encompass important and diverse examples of historic and contemporary art from around the world, and will be installed in the Museum’s new building and the surrounding landscape. Highlights include a gift of 28 sculptures by Auguste Rodin, and work by such internationally acclaimed artists as Roxy Paine, Ursula von Rydingsvard, El Anatsui, Jaume Plensa, Jackie Ferrara, Ellsworth Kelly, and David Park, among others.
The expansion project will also transform the Museum’s 1983 East Building, designed by the eminent architect Edward Durell Stone, into a dynamic center for temporary exhibitions, education and public programs, and public events, as well as a place for collections management and other administrative functions.
In December 2006 the Museum officially broke ground, and the new building is scheduled to open to the public on April 24. Upon completion, the 164-acre campus will be the nation’s largest art museum park, with walking paths, bike trails, ecological projects conceived with artists, and site-specific commissioned works of art in a rolling green landscape.
Read more about the museum's historic expansion.
See what the museum director has to say about the new gallery building.
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