About the Permanent Collection of the North Carolina Museum of Art

COLLECTIONS

Highlights of the Collection | About the Collection | Recent Acquisitions | Collection Timeline | Conservation

ABOUT THE COLLECTION

Origins of the Museum’s collection date back to 1947, when the North Carolina General Assembly set aside $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 art.

The $1 million appropriation was used to purchase 139 European and American paintings and sculpture. The Samuel H. Kress Foundation matched the appropriation with a gift of 75 works of art in 1960—the second largest gift ever presented by that foundation to an American art museum (after the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.). The Museum first opened on April 6, 1956, in a renovated state office building in downtown Raleigh, the state capital. On April 5, 1983, the Museum opened in its present location on Blue Ridge Road.

The North Carolina Museum of Art is perhaps best known for its outstanding European collection, having an enviable national and international reputation. The galleries contain works by masters of European painting and sculpture, from the Renaissance through impressionism. The collection includes works by Giotto, Sandro Botticelli, Raphael, Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens, Antonio Canova, Claude Monet and others.

The Museum’s Modern Gallery features major works by such American artists as Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe, Franz Kline, Frank Stella, John Biggers, Jacob Lawrence and Thomas Hart Benton, and by modern European masters including Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Delvaux, Henry Moore, Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter

The African Gallery contains many works of African art from the 19th and 20th centuries. Although most of the objects in the collection are made of wood, many are made of terracotta, beads, cast metals, textiles and ivory.

The Ancient collection includes two Egyptian coffins and other funerary art. The collection also contains important examples of Greek and Roman sculpture and vase painting.

A nearby gallery of American art from the 18th and 19th centuries features paintings by John Singleton Copley, Thomas Cole, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins and William Merritt Chase.

The Ancient American Gallery presents works from the ancient civilizations of Mexico, South America and Central America. Works from Mesoamerica, Peru and Costa Rica include ceramic and terracotta sculptures, stones and painted vases from the 6th to the 11th century.

The Museum contains one of only two galleries in the country devoted to Jewish ceremonial art. Many works in the collection are made of precious materials such as silver, gold and ivory. Works in the collection span from the 18th to the 20th century.

The Oceanic Gallery features works from island cultures in the Pacific. Oceanic art is made from a wide variety of natural materials including wood, stone, bone, feathers, textiles, fibers, seeds and shells.

The Museum’s collection contains over 5,000 pieces of art. Works in the galleries are continuously rotated, due to the loaning of art to other institutions as well as for the conservation and preservation of works of art.