The Nasher Museum of Art (previously the Duke University Museum of Art) is the art museum of Duke University, and is located on Duke's campus in Durham, North Carolina, United States. The Nasher, along with Dartmouth's

Hood Museum of Art The Hood Museum of Art is owned and operated by Dartmouth College, located in Hanover, New Hampshire, in the United States. The first reference to the development of an art collection at Dartmouth dates to 1772, making the collection among the o ...

and Princeton's

Art Museum An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum's own collection. It might be in public or private ownership and may be accessible to all or have restrictions in place. Although primarily con ...

, has been recognized as a place that "raises the cultural bar" on college campuses.

History

In 1936, art collector William Hayes Ackland wrote letters to three universities, attempting to find a place to bequest his collection to upon his death. Duke University President

William Preston Few William Preston Few (December 29, 1867 – October 16, 1940) was the first president of Duke University and the fifth president of its predecessor, Trinity College. Early life Few received his Bachelor of Arts, B.A. from Wofford College, Class of ...

was receptive to this idea, and had plans drawn up for an art museum at Duke. After the death of both Few and Ackland, Duke refused to accept the gift, for reasons still not disclosed. Ackland's estate had to posthumously find a new location to build a museum, eventually creating the

Ackland Art Museum The Ackland Art Museum is a museum and academic unit of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was founded through the bequest of William Hayes Ackland (1855–1940) to The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is located a ...

. In 1969, the university established the Duke University Museum of Art on Duke's East Campus with medieval art from the Ernest Brummer Collection. In the later twentieth century, there was a push to move the location of the museum to a more central location. Professors of botany fought the plan because the new location would disturb the "botanical study area," a field of plants. In the early twenty-first century, in part from a gift by alumnus Raymond Nasher, the museum became known as the Nasher Museum of Art and opened a new $24 million museum designed by architect

Rafael Viñoly Rafael Viñoly Beceiro (born 1944) is a Uruguayan architect. He is the principal of Rafael Viñoly Architects, which he founded in 1983. The firm has offices in New York City, Palo Alto, London, Manchester, Abu Dhabi, and Buenos Aires. Viñ ...

. Since its reopening, annual attendance is about 100,000 visitors. Mary D.B.T., great-granddaughter of

Benjamin Newton Duke Benjamin Newton Duke (April 25, 1855 – January 8, 1929) was an American tobacco, textile and energy industrialist and philanthropist. He served as vice-president at American Tobacco Company, being also founder of Duke Energy. Life and career ...

, brother of

James Buchanan Duke James Buchanan Duke (December 23, 1856 – October 10, 1925) was an American tobacco and electric power industrialist best known for the introduction of modern cigarette manufacture and marketing, and his involvement with Duke University. ...

, and James H. Semans were major contributors to the university art museum. From 1987 to 2003, Michael Mezzatesta was the director and oversaw the construction of the museum's new site. Sarah Schroth, former Nancy Hanks Senior Curator, is the director of the museum.

Collection

The collection contains more than 13,000 works of art, including works by

Nina Chanel Abney Nina Chanel Abney is an American artist, based in New York. She was born in Harvey, Illinois. She is an African American contemporary artist and painter who explores race, gender, pop culture, homophobia, and politics in her work. Personal lif ...

Ai Weiwei Ai Weiwei (, ; born 28 August 1957) is a Chinese contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist. Ai grew up in the far northwest of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile. As an activist, he has been openly c ...

, John Akomfrah,

Njideka Akunyili Crosby Njideka Akunyili Crosby (born 1983) is a Nigerian-born visual artist working in Los Angeles, California. Through her art Akunyili Crosby "negotiates the cultural terrain between her adopted home in America and her native Nigeria, creating collag ...

Emma Amos (painter) Emma Amos (16 March 1937 – 20 May 2020) was a postmodern African-American painter and printmaker. Early life Amos was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1937 to India DeLaine Amos and Miles Green Amos. She also has an older brother named Larry. A ...

, Firelei Báez, Radcliffe Bailey, Maria Berrio,

Sanford Biggers Sanford Biggers (born 1970 in Los Angeles) is a Harlem-based interdisciplinary artist who works in film/video, installation, sculpture, music, and performance.

Christian Boltanski Christian Liberté Boltanski (6 September 1944 – 14 July 2021) was a French sculptor, photographer, painter, and film maker. He is best known for his photography installations and contemporary French Conceptual art, conceptual style. Early li ...

Mel Chin Mel Chin (born 1951 in Houston, Texas, USA) is a conceptual visual artist. Motivated largely by political, cultural, and social circumstances, Chin works in a variety of art media to calculate meaning in modern life. Chin places art in landscapes, ...

William Cordova William Cordova (born 1969) is a contemporary cultural practitioner and interdisciplinary artist currently residing between Lima, Peru; North Miami Beach, Florida; and New York. Education William Cordova received a B.F.A. from The School of the ...

Marlene Dumas Marlene Dumas (born 3 August 1953) is a South African artist and painter currently based in the Netherlands. Life and work Dumas was born in 1953 in Cape Town, South Africa and grew up in Kuils River in the Western Cape, where her father had ...

, Darío Escobar, Genevieve Gaignard,

Jeffrey Gibson Jeffrey A. Gibson (born 1972)''U.S. Public Records Index'' Vol. 2 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.), 2010. is an American Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee painter, and sculptor. He has lived and worked in Brooklyn; Hudson, New York; and Ge ...

, Barkley L. Hendricks,

Rashid Johnson Rashid Johnson (born 1977) is an American artist who produces conceptual post-black art. Johnson first received critical attention in 2001 at the age of 24, when his work was included in '' Freestyle'' (2001) curated by Thelma Golden at the ...

, Taiyo Kimura,

Christian Marclay Christian Marclay (born January 11, 1955) is a visual artist and composer. He holds both American and Swiss nationality. Marclay's work explores connections between sound, noise, photography, video, and film. A pioneer of using gramophone records ...

Kerry James Marshall Kerry James Marshall (born October 17, 1955) is an American artist and professor, known for his paintings of Black figures. He previously taught painting at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2017, Marshall ...

Zanele Muholi Zanele Muholi (born 19 July 1972) is a South African artist and visual activist working in photography, video, and installation. Muholi's work focuses on race, gender and sexuality with a body of work that dates back to the early 2000's, documen ...

Wangechi Mutu Wangechi Mutu (born 1972) is a Kenyan-born American visual artist, known primarily for her painting, sculpture, film, and performance work.Odili Donald Odita, Maia Cruz Palileo, Ebony G. Patterson,

Dan Perjovschi Dan Perjovschi is an artist, writer and cartoonist born on 29 October 1961 in Sibiu, Romania. Perjovschi has over the past decade created drawings in museum spaces, most recently in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in which he created ...

Michelangelo Pistoletto Michelangelo Pistoletto (born 23 June 1933) is an Italian painter, action and object artist, and art theorist. Pistoletto is acknowledged as one of the main representatives of the Italian Arte Povera. His work mainly deals with the subject ma ...

Robin Rhode Robin Rhode (born 1976) is a South African artist based in Berlin. He has made wall drawings, photographs and sculptures. Education Rhode was born in Cape Town, South Africa. He studied fine art at Technikon Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (n ...

, Dario Robleto, Amy Sherald, Xaviera Simmons,

Lorna Simpson Lorna Simpson (born August 13, 1960) is an American photographer and multimedia artist. She came to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s with artworks such as ''Guarded Conditions'' and ''Square Deal''. Simpson is most well-known for her work in c ...

, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith,

Eve Sussman Eve Sussman is a British-born American artist of film, video, installation, sculpture, and photography. She was educated at Robert College of Istanbul, University of Canterbury, and Bennington College. She resides in Brooklyn, New York, where h ...

Henry Taylor (artist) Henry Taylor (born 1958) is an American artist and painter who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He is best known for his acrylic paintings, mixed media sculptures, and installations. Life Henry Taylor was born the youngest of eight bro ...

Alma Thomas Alma Woodsey Thomas (September 22, 1891 – February 24, 1978) was an African-American artist and teacher who lived and worked in Washington, D.C., and is now recognized as a major American painter of the 20th century. Thomas is best known for t ...

Hank Willis Thomas Hank Willis Thomas (born 1976 in Plainfield, New Jersey; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) is an American conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to identity, history, and popular culture. Early life and education Hank Willis Th ...

Mickalene Thomas Mickalene Thomas (born January 28, 1971) is a contemporary African-American visual artist best known as a painter of complex works using rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel.

, Bob Thompson,

Kara Walker Kara Elizabeth Walker (born November 26, 1969) is an American contemporary painter, silhouettist, print-maker, installation artist, filmmaker, and professor who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity in her work. She is best ...

Nari Ward Nari Ward (born 1963 in St. Andrew, Jamaica) is an American artist based in New York City. His work is often composed of found objects from his neighborhood, and "address issues related to consumer culture, poverty, and race". He is a distingui ...

Carrie Mae Weems Carrie Mae Weems (born April 20, 1953) is an American artist working in text, fabric, audio, digital images and installation video, and is best known for her photography. She achieved prominence through her early 1990s photographic project ''Th ...

Kehinde Wiley Kehinde Wiley (born February 28, 1977) he returned to Nigeria, leaving Freddie to raise the couple's six children. 3/sup> Wiley has said that his family survived on welfare checks and the limited income earned by his mother's 'thrift store' – ...

, Fred Wilson and Lynette Yiadom Boakye. The museum is dedicated to presenting contemporary art from around the world, with particular attention given to those who have been historically underrepresented. Founding director Kimberly Rorschach left for

Seattle Art Museum The Seattle Art Museum (commonly known as SAM) is an art museum located in Seattle, Washington, United States. It operates three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM) in Volunteer Park on Cap ...

in November 2012. The museum has a strong collection of Pre-Columbian art (3,300 objects), with particularly significant holdings of Mayan ceramics and Peruvian textiles.

Selected exhibitions

Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey ''March 21, 2013 – July 21, 2013'' The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University has organized

Wangechi Mutu Wangechi Mutu (born 1972) is a Kenyan-born American visual artist, known primarily for her painting, sculpture, film, and performance work.''Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey''
presents more than 50 works from the mid-1990s to the present, including collage, drawing, sculpture, installation and video. The exhibition features many of the artist’s most iconic collages drawn from major international collections, rarely seen early works and new creations. The exhibition also unveils the artist’s sketchbooks of intimate drawings that reveal her creative process and inspirations, on public view for the first time. Other new highlights include Mutu’s first-ever animated video,
The End of eating Everything
', created in collaboration with

Santigold Santi White (born September 25, 1976), known professionally as Santigold (formerly Santogold), is an American singer, songwriter and record producer. '' Billboard'' presented her in 2022, saying: "Spanning punk rock, hip-hop, and dance music, S ...

, commissioned by the Nasher Museum. Mutu also will transform the gallery into an environmental installation, including a monumental wall drawing, which allows visitors to immerse themselves in the artist's work. The exhibition is curated by Trevor Schoonmaker, Chief Curator and Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Curator of Contemporary Art. The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl ''September 2, 2010 – February 6, 2011'' This is the first museum exhibition to explore the culture of vinyl records within the history of contemporary art. Bringing together forty-one artists from around the world who have worked with records as their subject or medium, this groundbreaking exhibition examines the record’s transformative power in the years from the 1960s to the present. Through sound work, sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, photography, video, and performance, The Record combines contemporary art with

outsider art Outsider art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrate ...

, audio with visual, fine art with popular culture, and established artists with those exhibiting in a U.S. museum for the first time. The 41 artists in the exhibition include

Laurie Anderson Laurel Philips Anderson (born June 5, 1947), known as Laurie Anderson, is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and ...

, David Byrne,

Janet Cardiff Janet Cardiff (born March 15, 1957) is a Canadian artist who works chiefly with sound and sound installations, often in collaboration with her husband and partner George Bures Miller. Cardiff first gained international recognition in the art worl ...

, William Cordova, Jeroen Diepenmaat,

Jasper Johns Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker whose work is associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and pop art. He is well known for his depictions of the American flag and other US-related top ...

Jack Goldstein Jack Goldstein (September 27, 1945 – March 14, 2003) was a Canadian born, California-based performance and conceptual artist turned painter in the 1980s art boom. Early life and education Goldstein was born to a Jewish family in Montreal, ...

, Taiyo Kimura, Ralph Lemon,

, Mingering Mike, Dave Muller,

Vik Muniz Vik Muniz (; born 1961) is a Brazilian artist and photographer. Initially a sculptor, Muniz grew interested with the photographic representations of his work, eventually focusing completely on photography. Primarily working with unconventional ma ...

9th Wonder Patrick Denard Douthit (born January 15, 1975),
better known as 9th Wonder, is a DJ Rekha DJ Rekha (born Rekha Malhotra, 1971) is a London-born musician, DJ, producer, curator, activist. She has been credited with pioneering Bhangra music in North America. Her first album, ''DJ Rekha Presents Basement Bhangra'', released in October ...

, Dario Robleto,

Ed Ruscha Edward Joseph Ruscha IV (, ''roo-SHAY''; born December 16, 1937) is an American artist associated with the pop art movement. He has worked in the media of painting, printmaking, drawing, photography and film. He is also noted for creating severa ...

, Malick Sidibe, Xaviera Simmons,

Su-Mei Tse Su-Mei Tse (born 1973) is a Luxembourgian musician, artist and photographer. Her work combines photography, video, installations and music. In 2003, she received the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale for the best national participation.

, and

. The exhibition is curated by Trevor Schoonmaker. Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool ''February 7, 2008 – July 13, 2008'' This exhibit is the first career painting retrospective of renowned American artist Barkley L. Hendricks. Born in 1945 in Philadelphia, Hendricks' unique work resides at the nexus of American realism and post-modernism, a space somewhere between portraitists Chuck Close and Alex Katz and pioneering black conceptualists David Hammons and Adrian Piper. He is best known for his stunning, life-sized portraits of people of color from the urban northeast. Cool, empowering and sometimes confrontational, Hendricks' artistic privileging of a culturally complex black body has paved the way for today's younger generation of artists who are deeply indebted to him. This exhibition of Hendricks' paintings includes work from 1964 to the present. The exhibition will travel to the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Santa Monica Museum (Los Angeles,)the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. There is a definitive full-color exhibition catalogue with over 160 reproductions, edited by the Nasher Museum's curator of contemporary art Trevor Schoonmaker. El Greco to Velazquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III ''August 21, 2008 – November 9, 2008'' The Nasher Museum collaborated with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston to present this groundbreaking exhibition – the first in the US to focus on Spanish art of the period between 1598 and 1621. The show examines a fascinating period bookended by the two giants of Spanish painting: the late works of El Greco and the early paintings of Velázquez. The exhibition is the culmination of 20 years of research by Sarah Schroth, the Nasher Museum's senior curator. This exhibition includes some 120 paintings, sculptures and decorative art pieces, representing 20 artists. The masters will be seen in context with lesser-known artists working during this time in Spain. The show will bring together works of art from museums around the world, some of which rarely travel outside of their countries, creating a unique opportunity for American audiences. Key loans from the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, the Museo del Prado, the

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna The Kunsthistorisches Museum ( "Museum of art history, Art History", often referred to as the "Museum of Fine Arts") is an art museum in Vienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on the Vienna Ring Road, it is crowned with an ...

, and the National Gallery of Art, among other institutions and private lenders, were secured.

References

External links

Nasher Museum of Art websiteArtDaily coverage of the Nasher's opening
{{authority control Duke University campus Art museums and galleries in North Carolina Museums in Durham, North Carolina University museums in North Carolina Mesoamerican art museums in the United States Pre-Columbian art museums in the United States Institutions accredited by the American Alliance of Museums Art museums established in 2005 Buildings and structures completed in 2005 2005 establishments in North Carolina Rafael Viñoly buildings Modernist architecture in North Carolina