The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University announced Monday that it will open its new building on Oct. 2, 2005, creating a major new center for the arts on campus.
The $23 million museum, designed by architect Rafael Vinoly, will foster multidisciplinary learning and serve the Research Triangle region. The museum will open its two new special exhibition galleries with "The Evolution of the Nasher Collection" and "The Forest: Politics, Poetics and Practice," reflecting the museum's increased focus on modern and contemporary art.
The Nasher at Duke is named in honor of the family of Raymond D. Nasher, an internationally prominent art collector and philanthropist who graduated from Duke in 1943. The 65,000 square-foot facility will become a cornerstone for cultural activities on campus, serving as a venue for performing arts events, lectures, film series and social gatherings. The new building supports the continuing growth of the museum's collections, allows for leading-edge exhibitions in collaboration with museums around the country and provides an important cultural resource for the university and the public.
"Rafael Vinoly has designed an extraordinary building that will reinforce the Nasher Museum of Art's role as a catalyst for the arts at Duke," said Kimerly Rorschach, the Mary D.B.T. and James H. Semans director of the Nasher at Duke. "We are thrilled to inaugurate our building with two exceptional exhibitions, and in doing so, usher in a new era at the museum of increasing our focus on modern and contemporary art."
The new museum comprises five pavilions that will house three large gallery spaces, a 173-seat auditorium, museum shop, classrooms, administrative offices and a cafe. The building will provide 14,000 square feet of gallery space and another 13,000 square feet of display space in the atrium, which can accommodate large works and temporary installations. One of the three gallery spaces will display work from the museum's permanent collection, organized in thematic exhibitions to complement coursework and reflect the scholarly interests of Duke faculty. The two other gallery pavilions will host a rotating schedule of traveling exhibitions.
The museum's predecessor, the Duke University Museum of Art, was founded in 1969 and was housed in a former science building on East Campus until May 2004. Highlights of the museum's permanent collection of approximately 13,000 works of art include the Brummer Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Art, the George Harley Memorial Collection of African Art, a classical collection and more than 3,000 works of art of the ancient Americas.
Raymond Nasher provided the largest gift, $7.5 million, toward the new building. The Nasher Foundation of Dallas subsequently donated another $2.5 million in honor of Nasher, its founder. The Duke Endowment, a charitable trust in Charlotte, N.C., has contributed $2.5 million in honor of its chairman emerita and former Duke University trustee Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans. The atrium will be named in her honor. To date, the Nasher at Duke has raised $18 million toward its $23 million goal from a combination of public and private sources.
The museum is located at Anderson Street and Duke University Road between Duke's East and West campuses, adjacent to the 55-acre Sarah P. Duke Gardens, one of the region's most popular visitor destinations.
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"The Evolution of the Nasher Collection" (Oct. 2, 2005 to May 13, 2006)
Drawn from the internationally renowned collection of the museum's namesake, Raymond D. Nasher and his late wife, Patsy, "The Evolution of the Nasher Collection" will examine the development of one of the world's major collections of 20th-century sculpture. Starting with the Nashers' first acquisition in 1954, a work on paper by Ben Shahn, the exhibition will trace the collection's growth through the creation of the Nasher Sculpture Center in 2003. The distinguished collection contains works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Dubuffet, Henry Moore and Mark di Suvero. Along with sculpture, the show will represent the Nashers' interests in emerging artists, tribal and ancient American art, textiles, early American modernism and contemporary architecture. Most works in the exhibition will be on public display for the first time.
Selected works will include paintings purchased directly from Jean-Michel Basquiat and contemporary prints by Jasper Johns and Richard Diebenkorn purchased soon after they were created. Sculpture from the Nasher collection will continue outside the pavilion gallery into the atrium, terraces, entrance areas and outdoors. Works, including Auguste Rodin's Head of Balzac (1897), Jeff Koons' Louis XIV (1986), Paul Gauguin's Torso of a Woman (1896) and David Smith's Head (1938), will be presented in roughly the order in which they were acquired, to convey a sense of when they were available on the market, and how the collector's eye was refined over time. The visitor also will be introduced to the Nashers' architectural patronage and their interest in monumental sculpture for public places -- largely through photographs placed near pertinent pieces -- as well as their civic spirit in sharing their sculptural collection with the public.
"The Forest: Politics, Poetics and Practice" (Oct. 2, 2005, to Jan. 29, 2006)
"The Forest: Politics, Poetics and Practice" will focus on the forest as a theme in contemporary art, examining how artists around the world are tackling such issues as colonialism, war, nuclear threat and deforestation. The wooded landscape of the museum and the university's 8,000 acres of forest provide a fitting backdrop for the works and themes in the exhibition.
"The Forest" will mark the premiere of a new sculpture by New York-based artist Petah Coyne and will include work by more than 30 international artists, most of whom are also making their North Carolina debuts. Contemporary works by An-My Lª; (Vietnam), Rosemary Laing (Australia), Wim Wenders (Germany) and Inigo Manglano-Ovalle (Spain) examine political issues. Works by Kiki Smith (United States), Paloma Varga Weisz (Germany) and Yang Fudong (China) investigate the psychological, fantastic, mythical, spiritual and literary aspects of the forest. Alan Sonfist (United States), Simon Starling (United Kingdom) and others reflect work with communities or propose real-life answers to problems that threaten forests. The exhibition will include drawing, prints, sculpture, photography, film, video, digital imagery and sound art. The exhibition is co-sponsored by Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, which will work with the museum to develop a range of programs, including lectures and tours of Duke Forest.
Additional information is available here.