For the first time ever at the North Carolina Museum of Art, all four volumes of John James Audubon’s The Birds of America are currently on view.

Believe me, this has been a long time coming. From the transfer of the portfolios from the State Library to the Museum in 1974 to the five-year conservation and restoration program of 2002–2007, this migration has been worthy of a National Geographic documentary.

In the past the Museum has had the ability to show only one volume at a time, in a single case, because of a variety of physical, spatial, and conservation–related restrictions.

The Restrictions

1. Size of the books: really big. Each page is 40 by 26 inches. Not for nothing are they known as the Double Elephant Folios.

2. Size of the case: again, really big—73 inches long x 53 inches deep x 40 inches tall, including the protective glass hood.

3. Limited viewing. Only one page in one volume could be displayed at a time because of light restrictions.

4. Turning the pages—once each quarter—required:

• 8 people from 3 departments.
• 8 suction cups used by 4 strong people to remove the protective glass hood.
• Constant repair of the protective glass hood due to seam breakage during each opening.
• Extreme difficulty in closing the case due to a less-than-precise closure mechanism.

5. Size of the room: tiny. Less than 100 square feet—and it was really just a passageway between contemporary art galleries. In sum, there was no real gallery for the birds to roost in.

The Solutions

1. A dedicated gallery! The new 700-square-foot space allows all four volumes to be shown simultaneously. There are new in-gallery education panels and a reading area, and we can control light levels because the space is not a passageway.

2. New cases—four of them!—one for each volume. They’re each the same size as the old Audubon case, but with greatly improved construction. Pneumatic lifts allow art handlers to open the glass hoods with the greatest of ease (no more suction cups). Pullout decks give greater physical access to the books for safe page turning. And the cases close with a one-handed gentle mechanism and a self-locking system.

That’s right. Thanks to modern technology, what used to take eight people now takes only two or three. Our new cases, made by Glasbau Hahn of Germany, are the crème de la crème of museum casework and a capital investment that will last a lifetime. Unlock with a key, lift open the hood, pull out the deck, turn the page, add a new label, and close the case. It’s that easy. It now takes more time to coordinate the three people with a key than to get access to the book. Our work is more efficient, and the Museum can show more birds than ever before.

One word of caution for visitors to Audubon: you’re being watched. The new gallery is under surveillance by a few feathered friends on loan from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, so be warned—unless you foresee an Alfred Hitchcock moment in your future, please don’t touch the birds.

As staff members of the NCMA, we have seen West Building go from a mass of red piedmont clay to a concrete slab to golden oak floors and luminous glass walls. We stood witness to cart after cart rolling by with precious cargo as the collection moved to her new home. And with all hands on deck the walls were touched up, floors scrubbed, cases polished, and plans finalized for the Grand Opening celebration.

And what a remarkable celebration it was. Over the three day weekend, members and visitors by the thousands strolled through the new galleries, enjoyed the Museum campus, and basked in the glow of returning to their beloved museum.

But visitors have the opportunity to experience one thing that the NCMA staff will never know–walking into the new gallery building for the first time, seeing the completed space filled with art all at once, and having that overwhelming moment of wonder and excitement over the glorious light, the stunning expanse, the sheer beauty of it all.

We know it happens because we’ve been watching you take it in for a few weeks now and we are just as happy that you have returned to the galleries as you are to be here.

By the numbers:

22,006 Visitors toured the new building during the opening weekend

690 artists, dancers, vocalists, and musicians participated in the Opening Festival

1,014 NCMA branded items sold over opening weekend

14,479 NCMA membership as of opening weekend

Visitors came from all over North Carolina, the US, and even from around the world including California, Alaska, Colorado, South Dakota, Vermont, Venezuela, Norway, Australia, India, and China.

Modeled in 1880, greatly enlarged and installed outside Paris’s Panthéon in 1904, The Thinker was already used in an advertisement by 1908. The visual cliché has been around so long that, unless we see the sculpture in person, it’s hard for us to fully appreciate the one work Rodin deemed so vital he asked that it be put over his grave in Meudon, France. In April visitors to the NCMA will have the unique opportunity to see both the original and the enlarged versions of this most familiar of sculptures.

Before visiting, it might help to clear away some of the commercial cobwebs by considering what Rodin originally called the sculpture: not The Thinker but The Poet, according to Curator of European Art David Steel.

In his new book Rodin: The Cantor Foundation Gift to the North Carolina Museum of Art, Steel says The Poet was likely the first sculpture Rodin created for his famous The Gates of Hell. It sits high atop these bronze doors initially inspired by scenes in Dante’s Inferno. Steel tells us Rodin first imagined the poet to be Dante himself, “thinking of the plan of his poem.”

As an editor it touched me that this famous thinker was initially a writer, a poet facing the blank page. Rodin’s poet thinks so hard about his work of art that his toes grip the rock he sits on. Hardly cerebral, the poet is visceral, grounded, and heavy: the monumental cast installed in front of the NCMA’s new West Building, a loan from the Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford, weighs nearly 1,500 pounds.

I was curious what a true poet would have to say about Rodin’s original title for the sculpture, so I cold called a fine translator of Dante’s Inferno, former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky, who remarked on the deceptive ease of creating a poem, or any work of art. Pinsky likes Rodin’s original title “as a corrective to 19th-century and older notions of Orpheus or Dionysus or wild-eyed Highlands bards with their beards sideways in the Scottish wind.”

“It’s interesting,” Pinsky said, “to think about [Rodin’s] image of [The Poet]: hunched, not dancing or lyre-strumming, muscular, not epicene, and working hard. An image of composition and inner work, not of performance.”

Rodin labored on The Gates of Hell for more than 20 years. Gradually the work strayed from the Inferno, and Rodin included stories from the Bible and Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil. Slowly the Poet became the Thinker. “Guided by my first inspiration,” Rodin wrote, “I conceived another thinker, a naked man, seated upon a rock, his feet drawn under him, his fist against his teeth, he dreams. The fertile thought slowly elaborates itself within his brain. He is no longer dreamer, he is creator.”

In April you can learn more about The Thinker and other figures on The Gates of Hell by visiting the NCMA’s new Rodin court and garden. After seeing these magnificent sculptures in person, pick up a copy of Steel’s book in the new Museum Store or online. Rodin: The Cantor Foundation Gift to the North Carolina Museum of Art also includes a DVD documentary on the collection, created by Emmy Award–winning producer-director Art Howard and coproducer Julie Dixon.

This April Emmett McNeill will likely be reminiscing about an April nearly 30 years ago when he witnessed the NCMA’s transformative move  from a cramped government office building downtown to brand-new galleries on what was then the outskirts of town. It was the biggest transition the Museum had ever undergone—until now.

As the Museum’s longest-employed staff member (35 years!), Emmett has worked in nearly every corner of the NCMA. Sit down with the Raleigh native for a few minutes, and you’re privileged to hear the history of the Museum unfold before you from a different perspective.

Emmett’s tenure at the Museum began with an interview with Director Charles Stanford in spring 1974. “Seems like 100 years ago, but I guess it was just 35,” he says. Emmett worked as a security guard at the front entrance of the Museum for 10 years.

He rattles off names of staff members that many can’t recall or never worked with. “We have a good team here—a museum family,” he said.

Emmett remembers making trips through the Morgan Street building every morning to inspect the lights. At the time, security guards were in charge of lighting in the galleries. When a bulb needed changing, a guard took to the ladder. “Now the lighting crew—part of the Design team—takes care of that,” he explained.

Ask Emmett about the “attempted break-in by deer.”  Upon arrival at work one Saturday morning, Emmett was startled to find the front entrance blanketed with shattered glass. He later discovered the wily perpetrator was a distressed deer.

He has seen the Museum’s 50^th Anniversary Gala, blockbuster shows including the Rodin exhibition and Monet in Normandy, the opening of the Museum Park and Amphitheater, and among other things, an almost-heist by a four-legged mammal. And come April 2010, Emmett will add perhaps the most exciting chapter yet to his own personal history of life at the North Carolina Museum of Art.

As fun and exciting as it may all sound, a lot of planning and work happens behind the scenes to prepare for sending a work of art on the road. Back in October 2008, I was removed from my comfortable spot in the gallery and moved to the Museum’s conservation lab. While in the lab, the conservators did a very thorough job of examining me from top to bottom. I couldn’t be modest during this process—the conservators wanted to make sure that I was in good enough shape to withstand vigorous travel. I also had a fitting for my crate—it was built specifically to transport me from one venue to another. Crates are built to be super sturdy and protect works of art as they travel. The carpenters try to make it as comfortable as possible with extra foam padding, but it is not fun to be boxed up in the dark for a long time.

After much anticipation on my part, I was finally secured in my crate, the lid was screwed on, and I was on my way to my first stop—Washington, D.C. The ride was a little bumpy and I was relieved when I arrived at the National Gallery of Art. When the art handlers were ready to install me, they unscrewed my lid and took me out of my crate.  Before I could be hung on the wall, the conservators looked me over again to make sure I didn’t get any bumps or bruises on the road trip.  After a thumbs-up, I was hung on the wall with the other paintings. After a few deep breaths, I slowly relaxed and was able to take in the scenery. WOW—I recognized so many old friends from my artist’s studio even though it had been hundreds of years since I had seen them.  What fun it was to be reunited with them for this exciting journey!

This post is part of the series Follow Our Journey. Follow The Feast of Esther and six other works of art on the Big Move to the Museum’s new building.

Ledelle Moe, Congregation, 2005–07, concrete, dimensions variable, Courtesy of the artist, © 2009 Ledelle Moe

We can’t remember a time when we’ve been apart. You see, like most groups, we are stronger in numbers. We have more impact that way. It’s strange that even though each of is utterly unique, we all have really similar qualities. We are all made of concrete, we are roughly the same size, we all have a steel pin going through our head, and we are all the same age. It’s funny, because even though we look like we’re old, we’re really quite young. Our faces are all different, yet when you look at us, they sometimes seem the same.

Each of us is important individually, yet equally important as part of a group. And speaking of being in a group, sometimes it is tiring holding your head up, only knowing the same face next to you day after day, night after night. But soon, that will change. Soon, we will all come down from the wall and take a journey to a new place. And with that journey, we will each have a new face next to us. For now though, we patiently wait, looking forward to the day we can rest our heads for a bit.

This post is part of the series Follow Our Journey. Follow Congregation and six other works of art on the Big Move to the Museum’s new building.

Anselm Kiefer, Untitled, 1980–86, oil, acrylic, emulsion, shellac, lead, charcoal, and straw on photograph, mounted on canvas with stones, lead, and steel cable, various dimensions, Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina, W. R. Valentiner, and various donors, by exchange, © 2009 Anselm Kiefer

Silence. Stillness. Solitude. Finally. It won’t last–who knows what they have in store for me?–but it’s a relief for now.

I’m alone in my gallery, my very own gallery. That is, if you don’t count the Shapiro. And I don’t. Stella was carried out to God-knows-where weeks ago. That one was just too horribly cheerful. And the Katz, don’t get me started…the constant small-talk, the party chatter. The Albers, the gentle Albers, I do miss. Does that surprise you? I hope to see him again. It is heartening for a moment to think how something so precise, perhaps so cold and aloof at first glance, can be so moving and warm.

All that remains are empty walls–save for Stella’s hefty shelf–and industrial rolling ladders to nowhere. May I have one? My leaden ladder was stolen away soon after the crowds left, as were my heavy hanging stones and funnel. They are just objects, just facts, solid things that corrode, bend, gather dust; they buckle, crack and fade in the weather; they develop patina. Merely material. And yet we fill them with import, with symbolism and metaphor and stories. Lead, for instance, leads us down a rabbit-hole of associations: heavy, slow, poison, alchemy, bullets, batteries, planets, radiation, sculpture. Layers of meaning and history and imagination are encrusted on things that matter. But I shouldn’t go on like a bore.

These are thoughts that fill my head when you are gone. Anselm used to put some of us outside for a spell, to feel the rain and sun and be changed, forgotten or transformed. Perhaps that’s what’s next. Time will tell.

Frank Philip Stella, Raqqa II, American, 1970, synthetic polymer and graphite on canvas,120 x 300 in., Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, © 2009 Frank Stella/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

It’s difficult being popular. I know, I know. Those who aren’t quite as popular as me may not see this. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy being the big man on campus. I love having my picture everywhere—posters, brochures, post cards, the internet. I adore the groups of children who hover in front of me, whispering, chatting, even shouting out of turn in their school groups. I relish the audible gasp of first-time visitors as they round the corner and are taken aback by my size, my shape, my striking colors—the simple dominance of my presence. What I like most about being so remarkable is that people remember me. When they think of this place, when they recall what they have seen here, whether it was last year or 20 years ago, I come to mind. On return visits, they come to see me and there I am, just as they remember.

But all this fame and glory comes at a price. I am always on the job. From the day the doors opened here on Blue Ridge Road, I have never been anywhere other than hanging right on my wall. Can you believe that? There is simply no where for me to go for a respite—no storage space big enough, no corridor of size for me to squeeze down. I was once enclosed in a wall to cover me up for a special exhibition on flight (that was not fun) but other than that, I’ve never been off-view.

So I faithfully hang in my gallery, removed only for the occasional cleaning and inspection (which is a grand occasion in itself, but we’ll chat about that later on). So I have to admit I have been looking forward to my journey to the new gallery building for quite some time. I’ll fill you in on that as well as where I was before I came to the NCMA almost 30 years ago. While it is difficult being the largest painting in our collection, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

This post is part of the series Follow Our Journey. Follow Raqqa II and six other works of art on the Big Move to the Museum’s new building.

We can still remember, but just barely, the days when we were not united, when we were nothing but stones and sand, scattered about the lands. We were gathered up by many hands, treasured and cleaned, and finally brought together, a great mosaic, forming us into our collective. Here we talk and think together. Here we can watch the world around us move.

There were centuries when we sat on the ground, walked upon by thousands of men, women, and children. How we loved the children! They did not just walk on us, they skipped, they played, enjoying what we gave them. In those days we had the sun, we had the dry North African land.

Mosaic, 2nd Century, Roman, Marble and glass, 8ft 2in x 8ft 2in, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hanes, 1979 (79.6.9)

Then we were moved, to a dark place where we didn’t see the sun. We were alone. We were untouched and we grew apart. Then, finally, the children came back. Soon we could hear their questions, see their faces, feel their smiles. We lay in a place of honor, among the myriad other stone creations.

And now we come to another move. Now we shall be split apart, but only for a moment, and then a new world. There we shall see light again. Truly beautiful light! We will once more be able to view the stars at night, and once more see our old friends. Our new home, with its sturdy white walls and smooth wood floors. And children.

This post is part of the series Follow Our Journey. Follow The Mosaic and six other works of art on the Big Move to the Museum’s new building.

Jan Lievens, The Feast of Esther, circa 1625–26, oil on canvas, 53 x 65 in., Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina

Has there been a time in your life when you were so excited to go on vacation and then after a while were just ready to get back home? Well, that’s exactly how I was feeling. In October 2008, I embarked on a new and exciting journey—but now I am certainly ready to go home. Don’t get me wrong—I was thrilled to return to the homeland, visit new places, and see lots of interesting people, but North Carolina is where I belong.

Let me back up a bit and start at the beginning. I was hanging peacefully in my usual spot when my day was totally thrown into chaos. I was told that I was leaving for a trip, and for almost a year I have been traveling with an exhibition—Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered. My first stop was the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Then I made my way a bit west to the Milwaukee Art Museum. The last leg of my journey took me across the ocean to the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam. So many visitors looking at me and me looking out at new and different faces and spaces was a thrill. Now that the trip has come to an end, one of my caretakers from home has come to pick me up. She’ll travel with me the whole way and ensure my safe arrival in Raleigh.

Stay tuned…I’ll let you know how the journey home went.

This post is part of the series Follow Our Journey. Follow The Feast of Esther and six other works of art on the Big Move to the Museum’s new building.