New Life Starts For North Carolina Museum Of Art

Over the weekend, the North Carolina Museum of Art re-opened in an expanded incarnation. The centerpiece is a 127,000 sq. ft. “light-filled building” designed by Thomas Phifer and Partners. A sculpture hall is the spine from which 40 galleries branch out, according to press materials.

I have not yet visited, but it seems to have done several things well.

For a start, as Chuck Twardy reported in the Raleigh News & Observer, it used the occasion to rethink the collection. He writes:

What’s surprising, though, is the degree to which the new building has influenced decisions about the collection. The scrims filtering daylight through its revolutionary roof can be changed to adapt to new configurations, giving curators flexibility to move art around and to rotate pieces in and out of view. The building allows them to show 18.5 percent of the collection at any time, and they are making the most of it.

 

“It was really an opportunity to show the permanent collection in a new way,” said Linda Dougherty, the museum’s chief curator and curator of contemporary art. “We didn’t want to just re-create the way we had installed it in our existing building. We really wanted to think about different juxtapositions, different relationships, between objects and between different areas of the collection.”

Later she says: 

 

It’s a really different building from our existing building, so it makes you think about the collection in a different way and I think people who are very familiar with the museum’s collection are going to feel like they are seeing new work, because it looks so dramatically different in this space.”

All true, no doubt. But I also like that John W. Coffey, deputy director and curator of American art acknowledged the museum had “weak spots” in its collection that resisted a strictly chronological approach. No sense beating around the bush, imho (though he also said that chronology was “boring,” and it isn’t necessarily if you have the goods).

 

Here’s a link to Twardy’s article and an interactive feature that lets you zoom into the galleries for close-ups is here. You’ll also find a tour with the director on the website, but it loaded so slowly on my computer that I gave up.

 

The museum, meanwhile, posted hundreds of photos of the building on Flickr, accessed through its website. Good idea, too.

 

And the museum has recently made some 200 aquisitions, including works by Ellsworth Kelly, Jennifer Steincamp, Roxy Paine, and Ursula van Rydingsvard.

 

Third, on Friday, according to the North Carolina News Network, the museum announced a campaign to raise funds for its endowment, programming and grounds. The goal is $50 million by the end of 2013, and so far the total committed is $26 million.

 

Many museums finish a capital campaign and take a rest, figuring they’ll get to the endowment later. Actually, capital and endowment campaigns ought to go hand-in-hand; but when they don’t, the one better closely follow the other.

 

The North Carolina museum did receive public funds — $73 million from the state, county and city, according to the NCNN. That makes an endowment campaign easier. Still, “more than 60 percent of the NCMA’s operational and programmatic budget is provided by private sources (individuals, corporations and foundations),” NCNN says. Here’s that link.

 

NCMA’s old building will reopen later this year.

 

Photo Credit: Courtesy North Carolina Museum of Art