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Explore N.C. Museums!With excellent museums and galleries in every region of North Carolina, it’s easy to make a museum stop part of your travel plans. The Museums in a Minute series shares with you a variety of art collections to experience with family and friends. Whether you’re looking for European or American Art, the art of ancient civilizations, contemporary art, folk art, studio craft, works by artists from our state or from around the world, Museums in a Minute shows you where to find it. We’ll profile one museum each week in September. In coming months, we’ll continue to highlight museums across the state. Let Museums in a Minute be your guide to experiencing rich collections of art that are just a car trip away! Welcome from Jeff Pettus
Jeff Pettus, Senior Program Director, Artists and Organizations for the North Carolina Arts Council offers a personal welcome to the Museums in a Minute series, highlights some of our state’s finest museum holdings, and gives a hint of where the series will be heading. North Carolina has been an important place for visual arts since the 1930’s when Black Mountain College was established (1933) and the beginning of our state’s museum system. In 1936, the Mint Museum in Charlotte became North Carolina’s first permanent art museum, followed in 1947 by the state’s unprecedented $1 million appropriation for a public art collection for the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. Many North Carolina artists, like Maud Gatewood, have achieved national recognition, and many African American artists with national reputations were born in North Carolina, including John Biggers, Romare Bearden, Selma Burke, Minnie Evans, Charles Alston, J. Eugene Grigsby, and younger artists like Beverly McIver. Today our art museums have become integral gathering places in our vibrant cities. And significant new facilities have opened in the last decade, including the Mint Museum of Craft + Design (Charlotte), Cameron Art Museum (Wilmington), Nasher Museum of Art (Durham), and the Rocky Mount Arts Center at the Imperial Centre. The Wachovia First Street Cultural Campus (Uptown Charlotte) will become an important art venue in 2009 with the opening of the new Bechtler Museum of Modern Art. Additionally the campus will be home to the Afro-American Cultural Center, which will accommodate the Vivian Hewitt Collection of African American Art and The Mint Museumat Center City. Profiled MuseumsWatch this space as we add more museums in the future! Gregg Museum of Art and Design |
