Expansion
The Museum's new 127,000-square-foot building creates a beautiful home for the permanent collection with dramatically expanded exhibition space highlighted by daylit galleries. The aluminum-clad exterior is surrounded by exquisite outdoor gardens showcasing large-scale sculpture. Dozens of new art acquisitions are on view for the first time.
About the Expansion
The North Carolina Museum of Art—the first major art museum collection in the country to be formed by state legislation and funding—is the state’s greatest cultural gem. The centerpiece of the recently completed expansion initiative is a new 127,000-square-foot, light-filled building designed by New York-based architects Thomas Phifer and Partners. The single-story structure, surrounded by sculpture gardens and beautiful pools, was created specifically to showcase the Museum’s outstanding permanent collection of more than 5,000 objects spanning antiquity to the present day.
On the occasion of the expansion, the Museum has acquired more than 100 new works of art. Representing commissions, gifts, and purchases, the new works encompass important and diverse examples of historic and contemporary art from around the world and are installed in the Museum’s new building and the surrounding landscape. Highlights include a gift of 30 sculptures by Auguste Rodin and work by such internationally acclaimed artists as Roxy Paine, Ursula von Rydingsvard, El Anatsui, Jaume Plensa, Jackie Ferrara, Ellsworth Kelly, and David Park.
The expansion project also transformed the Museum’s 1983 East Building, designed by the eminent architect Edward Durell Stone, into a dynamic center for temporary exhibitions, education and public programs, and public events, as well as a place for collections management and other administrative functions.
In December 2006 the Museum officially broke ground, and the new building opened to the public on April 24, 2010. The 164-acre campus is the nation’s largest art museum park, with walking paths, bike trails, ecological projects conceived with artists, and site-specific commissioned works of art in a rolling green landscape.
Principals
The building was designed by Thomas Phifer of Thomas Phifer and Partners, New York. Local executive architect for the project is Pearce Brinkley Cease + Lee Architects of Raleigh, N.C. The landscape architect for the expansion project is Walt Havener of Lappas + Havener, Durham, N.C.
Project Principals (pdf)
Architect Thomas Phifer Interview (pdf)
