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The North Carolina Museum of Art is an art museum that houses the art collection of North Carolina. It is located in Raleigh, North Carolina.

History
The North Carolina Museum of Art houses the art collections of the State of North Carolina. These collections had their beginnings in 1947 when the North Carolina General Assembly appropriated $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 a collection of art.

The initial $1 million appropriation was used to purchase 139 European and American paintings and sculpture. The Samuel H. Kress Foundation matched the appropriation with the gift of 75 works of art in 1960, adding the Museum to its program of endowing regional museums throughout the United States with works from the Kress Collection. The Kress gift to the Museum became the largest and most important of any except that given to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

The Museum opened in April 1956 in a renovated state office building in downtown Raleigh. On April 5, 1983, the Museum opened in its present facility.

Museum
The Museum has an extensive permanent collection which is free to visit. Admission is free to the permanent collection, but there are charges for some special exhibits and events. Guided tours are offered daily for free or visitors may take an audio tour for a small fee.

Groundbreaking on a new $70+ million museum was celebrated in December 2006. The new museum, designed by New York architects Thomas Phifer and Partners, is to be completed in 2009.

The Museum also has a gift shop offering art-related merchandise, including prints of the Museum’s most beloved works of art. The Blue Ridge Restaurant is also located in the bottom floor of the Museum and offers a lunch menu which features sandwiches, salads, and more.

The Museum is located on Blue Ridge Road, near the intersection of Wade Avenue and Interstate 40. The Museum is a 15-minute drive from downtown Raleigh and a 20-to 30-minute drive from the nearby university towns of Durham and Chapel Hill.

The Joseph M. Bryan, Jr., Theatre is the museum’s 500 seat open-air amphitheatre, with lawn seating for 2,000 hosts outdoor films and musical performances in the summer, and features an area where visitors can picnic. The museum hosts several performances a year, and has featured such artists as Doc Watson, Los Lobos, and Allen Toussaint.

Permanent Collection
The permanent collection spans more than 5,000 years, from ancient Egypt to the present and includes thousands of works of art—making it one of the premier art museums in the region. In 2005 the Museum received a gift of 29 sculptures by Auguste Rodin from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation. The Museum will install the collection and establish a Rodin study center in 2008. With this gift, the Museum becomes the only Rodin repository in the South.

Ancient Collection
The ancient collection includes works from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The collection of Egyptian funerary art includes two Egyptian coffins and reliefs from the tomb of Khnumti in Saqqarah. The Greek collection contains an intact neck amphora and the Roman art includes a bust of the emperor Marcus Aurelius and a bust of a woman believed to be Augustus Caesar’s wife Livia Drusilla, modeled in the style of Venus.

African Collection
Consists of African art from the 19th and 20th centuries including objects made of wood, terracotta, cast metals, textiles and ivory.,

European Collection
Works by masters of European painting and sculpture, covering the Renaissance through impressionism. Includes works by Giotto, Sandro Botticelli, Raphael, Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens, Antonio Canova, and Claude Monet.

Modern Collection
Includes works by Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe, Franz Kline, Frank Stella, John Biggers, Jacob Lawrence, Thomas Hart Benton, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Delvaux, Henry Moore, Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter. 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, gold and ivory.

Museum Park
In addition to the indoor museum there is a 164 acre area called the Museum Park where art installations are spread throughout trails, streams and open spaces. Visitors are encouraged to explore art and ecology together. The park was developed from donated land where a farm formerly sat along with a now relocated state youth prison. Park planning is done by the museum in cooperation with the North Carolina State College of Natural Resources.

Exhibitions
In addition to the permanent collection, the museum generally has at least one travelling or temporary exhibition on display.

Upcoming Exhibitions
Julie Mehretu: City Sitings, August 17, 2008 through November 30, 2008

Current Exhibitions
Far from Home February 17--July 13, 2008 Free

Far from Home] addresses the global displacement of people and populations as they relocate for economic, political, or other reasons. The exhibition features photography, paintings, and sculpture by artists of diverse national and cultural origins.

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. Modern American Paintings showcases 13 paintings including major works by leading Southern California modernists Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Hans Burkhardt, and Lee Mullican.

Previous Exhibitions

 * Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism, October 21, 2007--January 13, 2008 Spanning 1850s to the early twentieth century, works by French artists as Gustave Courbet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Claude Monet as well as Americans Childe Hassam and John Singer Sargent. Showcases an array of impressionistic landscapes. Organized by the Brooklyn Museum.
 * Temples and Tombs: Treasures of Egyptian Art from The British Museum - 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--February 18, 2007
 * Revolution in Paint - September 17, 2006--February 11, 2007
 * Monet in Normandy - 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--July 16, 2006
 * Sordid and Sacred: The Beggars in Rembrandt's Etchings, Selections from the John Villarino Collection - March 5--May 28, 2006
 * The Potter's Eye: Art and Tradition in North Carolina Pottery - October 30, 2005--March 19, 2006
 * Crosscurrents: Art, Craft, and Design in North Carolina - September 25, 2005--January 8, 2006
 * Shadow Boxes: Collages of Experience and Memory - August 15--December 11, 2005
 * Fusion: Contemporary Glass Art 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, From the Collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art - June 6--August 29, 2004
 * Brushes With Life: Art, Artists And Mental Illness - Ended August 15, 2004
 * Augustus Saint-Gaudens: American Sculptor of the Gilded Age - 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 and Rembrandt - Oct.ober 13, 2002--January 5, 2003
 * Selections from The Birds of America by John James Audubon - July 14--December 1, 2002
 * The Reverend McKendree Robbins Long: Picture Painter of the Apocalypse - April 7--August 25, 2002
 * Empire of the Sultans: Ottoman Art from the Khalili Collection - May 19--July 28, 2002
 * Toulouse-Lautrec: Master of the Moulin Rouge From the Collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art - November 11, 2001--February 17, 2002
 * Picasso, Braque, Leger: Paintings From the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Julian H. Robertson - June 10--September 9, 2001
 * Xu Bing: Reading Landscape - April 29--August 5, 2001
 * Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism - March 4--July 1, 2001
 * Is Seeing Believing? - January 14-- April 1, 2001
 * Ansel Adams - October 8, 2000--January 7, 2001
 * Rodin - April 16--August 13, 2000