Artist Conversation with Shanequa Gay
2020-11-13 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Zoom (Link Provided with Ticket), United States
This event has now passed. Watch a recording of the talk below!
Join us for a conversation between artist Shanequa Gay and Lauren Turner, the Ackland’s assistant curator for the collection. They will discuss Gay’s commissioned installation holding space for nobility: a memorial for Breonna Taylor, which is now on view in the Ackland’s ART& gallery.
holding space for nobility: a memorial for Breonna Taylor is a site-specific installation that features monumental chimeric figures rendered in oil and acrylic. Gay merges Breonna Taylor’s likeness with deer and zebra features in a technique of juxtaposition that she employs throughout her artmaking practice. The resulting hybrid guardians incorporate multiple characteristics of the natural world to facilitate healing and empowerment. An altar-like display of vintage Tiara black glassware and salt water transforms the gallery into a space for collective mourning while the monochromatic installation starkly reminds viewers that Taylor’s death resulted from forces that shape the lives of countless Black Americans.
Shanequa Gay, an Atlanta native, has exhibited at the Zuckerman Museum (Kennesaw, GA), the Hammonds House Museum (Atlanta, GA), the Hayti Heritage Center (Durham, NC), the McColl Center for Art + Innovation (Charlotte, NC), and the Chattanooga African American Museum (Chattanooga, TN). For more information about her work, please go to www.shanequagay.com.
This installation and related programming have been made possible by the generous support of James Keith Brown and Eric Diefenbach.

Recording of our “Artist Conversation with Shanequa Gay” held Friday, Nov 13, 2020. Also available on the Ackland’s YouTube channel.

Virtual Art for Lunch: The "Can We Talk About Race?" Initiative
2020-11-18 12:00 - 13:00 | Zoom (Link Provided with Ticket), United States
Featuring Diana Dayal and Bria Godley (UNC School of Medicine) and Elizabeth Manekin (Ackland Head of University Programs and Academic Projects)
During this virtual Art for Lunch, the conversation will focus on the “Can We Talk About Race?” initiative of the Ackland and UNC’s School of Medicine, as well as the associated Object Lessons installation currently on view at the Museum. The initiative, now in its third year, uses artwork made by contemporary Black artists as a catalyst to discuss race and racial inequity in medicine.
Bring your lunch–and questions of your own–for this lively, conversational program.
Free, register here via Zoom.

Odd Couples: Objects in Conversation
2020-11-20 12:00 - 13:00, 2020-12-04 12:00 - 13:00 | Ackland Art Museum, 101 S. Columbia Street, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, United States
Join Ackland Graduate Intern Sarah Farkas and Object Based Teaching Fellow Erin Dickey for a guided look at artwork from opposite corners of the Ackland’s collection. See how unexpected pairings can lead to exciting new insights!
This program will be held virtually, via Zoom. Registered participants will receive a link to join the program in a separate email.
Registration is limited. RSVP below!

Close Looks at Cocktail Hour: Shanequa Gay's holding space for nobility: a memorial for Breonna Taylor
2021-01-27 17:00 - 17:45 | Zoom (Link Provided with Ticket), United States
Join the Ackland’s Object Based Teaching Fellow, Erin Dickey, for an informal conversation focused on one work of art from the Ackland’s new Close Looks digital feature. Plan to look closely and think collectively—and bring a drink of your choosing.
On January 27, we’ll look at Shanequa Gay’s site-specific installation, holding space for nobility: a memorial for Breonna Taylor.
Registration is limited.

After RSVPing, you will receive an email with the link to join the program. Please email acklandRSVP@unc.edu if you have any questions!

Odd Couples: Objects in Conversation
2021-02-05 12:00 - 13:00 | Zoom (Link Provided with Ticket), United States
Join Ackland Graduate Intern Sarah Farkas and Object Based Teaching Fellow Erin Dickey for a guided look at artwork from opposite corners of the Ackland’s collection. See how unexpected pairings can lead to exciting new insights!
We will be looking at Ken Price’s The Squeeze and Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-Le-Duc’s Ciborium.
This program will be held virtually, via Zoom. Registered participants will receive a link to join the program in a separate email.
Registration is limited.

Hanes Visiting Artist Series: Sousveillance
2021-02-08 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom (Link Provided with Ticket), United States
HANES VISITING ARTIST LECTURE
Maria Gaspar, Hương Ngô (UNC BFA Alumna), and Anna Martine Whitehead
“Sousveillance and How to Think Like a Forest”
Register to attend here: https://go.unc.edu/o9CJk
Registration will end at 5 pm on February 7. A zoom link will be emailed to registrants 24 hours in advance of the lecture.
Sousveillance – watching from below, “the monitoring of authorities by informal networks of regular people, equipped with little more than cellphone cameras, video blogs and the desire to remain vigilant against the excesses of the powers that be.”[1]
In this conversation, Whitehead, Gaspar, and Ngô will speak on their respective practices which encompass performance, social practice, and installation, among others. They will draw relationships amongst their research which engage themes of liberation, surveillance, and belonging in the spirit of a collective building of knowledge.
For more information about the artists, please visit their websites:
Maria Gaspar, https://mariagaspar.com
Huong Ngô, https://www.huongngo.com
Anna Martine Whitehead, https://annamartine.com/home.html
This event is co-sponsored by the Ackland Art Museum and the Department of Art and Art History

Close Looks at Cocktail Hour: Tennessee Williams's "Midnite Show"
2021-02-17 17:00 - 17:45 | Zoom (Link Provided with Ticket), United States
Join the Ackland’s Object Based Teaching Fellow, Erin Dickey, for an informal conversation focused on one work of art from the Ackland’s new Close Looks digital feature. Plan to look closely and think collectively—and bring a drink of your choosing.
On February 17, we’ll look at acclaimed playwright Tennessee William’s artwork, Midnite Show.
Registration is limited.

After RSVPing, you will receive an email with the link to join the program. Please email acklandRSVP@unc.edu if you have any questions!

"Posing Modernity: A Retrospective View" with Denise Murrell
2021-02-19 15:30 - 16:30 | Zoom, United States
Join us for a free virtual conversation with Denise Murrell about her exhibition Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today, which was on view at the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, in 2018 and 2019. Murrell is a UNC alumna (’76) and she was recently appointed Associate Curator, Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Art, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
This Zoom webinar is free and open to the public. Registration is now open!
Following the public conversation, Ackland members are invited to register for a more intimate chat about Murrell’s work. Space is limited and an invitation will be sent in January 2021. To learn about becoming a member, visit our website or email us.
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Denise Murrell was born in New York City and raised mainly in Gastonia, N.C. After completing her BS degree at Carolina, she went on to earn an MBA from Harvard Business School (1980) and had an extended career in finance and consulting, culminating as Managing Director of Institutional Investor Research Group, Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC (1995–2005).
Murrell’s career took a new direction in the early 2000s when she began studying art history at Columbia University. She earned MA, MPhil, and PhD degrees at Columbia, with her 2014 PhD dissertation forming the basis of Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today, an exhibition she curated at Columbia University’s Wallach Art Gallery (Oct 2018–Feb 2019) as the Wallach’s first Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Research Scholar (2014–2019). She then served as co-curator of the exhibition’s expansion, Le Modèle Noir de Géricault à Matisse, at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris (Mar–July 2019).
Murrell is the author of the Posing Modernity exhibition catalogue published by Yale University Press, which recently received the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for smaller museums, libraries, collections and exhibitions. She has taught art history at Columbia University in New York and Paris, and has given public lectures at numerous museums and universities in the US and Europe.
Denise Murrell currently serves on the Ackland Art Museum’s National Advisory Board.

Artist Conversation: Renée Stout
2021-03-12 15:30 - 16:30 | Ackland Art Museum, 101 S. Columbia Street, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, United States
Join us for a conversation between artist Renée Stout and the Ackland’s Lauren Turner, assistant curator for the collection. Stout’s work Ogun (1995) is part of the Museum’s permanent collection and will be featured in the digital Close Looks project. In this free public conversation, we’ll revisit Ogun twenty-five years on, using the work to explore Stout’s artistic trajectory, including the state of her current projects.
Listen to Lauren Turner, Assistant Curator for the Collection, on WCHL discuss Renée Stout’s Ogun here!
Sign up for free tickets to this virtual artist conversation below! A Zoom link will be provided in your ticket confirmation email.
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Renée Stout was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 1980 and has been based in Washington, DC since 1985. Originally trained as painter, Stout’s oeuvre has evolved to include mixed media sculpture, photography and installations. She is the recipient of many awards, including a 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art and most recently, the 2020 Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Award and a Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award. She has shown nationally and internationally, and her work is in several national and international public and private collections.

Ackland Film Forum: "Happy Together" Watch Party and Panel
2021-03-16 19:30 - 22:00 | Zoom (Link Provided with Ticket), United States
Join us for the second film in the Ackland Film Forum’s spring series on Global Queer Cinema: Happy Together (Wong Kar Wai, 1997). The series is a collaboration with the Film Studies Program in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill, and features a selection of four international films presented in connection with the Ackland’s Close Looks digital initiative. View the selected films on your own or join us for a watch party. Watch parties will be followed by a live post-film panel discussion with scholars from around the globe.
Happy Together will be available to stream March 12-18, 2021 with a virtual watch party on Tuesday, March 16 at 7:30 p.m. followed by a live panel discussion at 9:15 p.m. We are excited to welcome Dr. Stephen Teo (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) for our post-film panel, who will be in conversation with Rick Warner (UNC-Chapel Hill) and Martin L. Johnson (UNC-Chapel Hill). Register for free tickets below to receive a link to stream the film and a link to attend the panel via Zoom on March 16.
About Happy Together
One of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Wong Kar Wai’s emotionally raw, lushly stylized portrait of a relationship in breakdown casts Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung as a couple traveling through Argentina and locked in a turbulent cycle of infatuation and destructive jealousy as they break up, make up, and fall apart again and again. Setting out to depict the dynamics of a queer relationship with empathy and complexity on the cusp of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong — when the country’s LGBT community suddenly faced an uncertain future — Wong crafts a feverish look at the life cycle of a love affair that’s by turns devastating and deliriously romantic. Shot by ace cinematographer Christopher Doyle in both luminous monochrome and luscious saturated color, Happy Together is an intoxicating exploration of displacement and desire that swoons with the ache and exhilaration of love at its heart-tearing extremes. —Janus Films
Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Happy Together Watch Parties | Tweet along with Ackland and UNC Film Studies using #AcklandFilmForum
7:30 p.m. Watch Party
9:15 p.m. Panel
Link to the panel is provided with registration. Streaming links will be sent at a later date. Registration is open!
The Ackland Film Forum is supported in part by the Laughing Gull Foundation.

Close Looks at Cocktail Hour: Renée Stout's Ogun
2021-03-17 17:00 - 17:45 | Zoom (Link Provided with Ticket), United States
Join the Ackland’s Object Based Teaching Fellow, Erin Dickey, for an informal conversation focused on one work of art from the Ackland’s new Close Looks digital feature. Plan to look closely and think collectively—and bring a drink of your choosing.
On March 17, we’ll look at Renée Stout’s piece, Ogun.
Registration is limited.

After RSVPing, you will receive an email with the link to join the program. Please email acklandRSVP@unc.edu if you have any questions!

Kusama and Beyond: A Conversation with Collectors JK Brown and Eric Diefenbach
2021-03-18 18:30 - 19:30 | Zoom (Link Provided with Ticket), United States
Join collectors of modern and contemporary art JK Brown and Eric Diefenbach in a lively conversation with Ackland Director Katie Ziglar and Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs Peter Nisbet. Brown and Diefenbach are currently lending works from their personal collection by internationally-renowned contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama to the Ackland’s exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Open the Shape Called Love (on view through March 27). We’ll discuss how Brown and Diefenbach got into the world of collecting, how their extensive collection developed, how they live with their art, and what appeals in particular about the work of Kusama. Participants will have the opportunity to pose their own questions.
This virtual conversation is free and open to the public. A link to the Zoom webinar is provided with your ticket, which you can register for below.
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JK Brown and Eric Diefenbach have been longtime friends of the Ackland. Over the past twenty years, they have lent almost 100 works from their collection to various Ackland exhibitions, decisively enriching such shows as Counterlives (2010-11), Carolina Collects: 150 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art from Alumni Collections (2011), and Toriawase: A Special Installation of Modern Japanese Art and Ceramics (2020). Their collection of German art was featured in De-Natured: German Art from Joseph Beuys to Martin Kippenberger (2011). Brown is a UNC alum (’84) and has served on numerous boards and committees at Carolina, including the Ackland’s National Advisory Board.

Odd Couples: Objects in Conversation
2021-03-19 12:00 - 13:00 | Zoom (Link Provided with Ticket), United States
Join Ackland Graduate Intern Sarah Farkas and Object Based Teaching Fellow Erin Dickey for a guided look at artwork from opposite corners of the Ackland’s collection. See how unexpected pairings can lead to exciting new insights!
We will be looking at Louise Bourgeois’s Crouching Spider and the bronze Mother and Child.
This program will be held virtually, via Zoom. Registered participants will receive a link to join the program in a separate email.
Registration is limited.

Artist Conversation: Creating "Mysterious Ink World, Part One (2016)"
2021-04-09 15:30 - 16:30 | Zoom (Link Provided with Ticket), United States
Join us Friday, April 9 for an in-depth look at Mysterious Ink World, Part One (2016), a collaborative contemporary work featured in the Ackland Art Museum’s newest installation of Asian art, Clouding: Shape and Sign in Asian Art. The immersive work is composed of an abstract ink painting by Ming Ren (American, b. 1956) installed opposite an interactive projection responding in real time to the viewers of the painting, designed by computer scientist and artificial intelligence pioneer Hansong Zhang (Chinese, b. 1969), who received his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1998. Both Ming Ren and Hansong Zhang will join us for a conversation about how the work came together and the nature of their artistic collaboration. Ellen Huang, former curator for Asian art, will moderate the conversation and help situate the work within the larger themes of Clouding.
The virtual program is free and open to the public. Free tickets must be obtained below to receive the Zoom link. Interested visitors may wish to see Clouding: Shape and Sign in Asian Art in person in the Ackland’s recently reopened galleries by obtaining a timed ticket.
The program is presented in connection with UNC’s Arts Everywhere Day 2021.
Clouding: Shape and Sign in Asian Art (on view January 20, 2021 – February 13, 2022) has been organized by Ellen Huang, former curator for Asian art, with Peter Nisbet, deputy director for curatorial affairs. It has been made possible in part by the Ackland’s Ruth and Sherman Lee Fund for Asian Art, Linda and Philip Carl, Smith Freeman and Austin Scarlett, and Mina Levin and Ronald Schwarz.

Ackland Film Forum: "Fire" Watch Party and Panel
2021-04-13 19:30 - 22:30 | Zoom (Link Provided with Ticket), United States
Join us for the third film in the Ackland Film Forum’s Global Queer Cinema Series, Deepa Mehta’s Fire (1996, Canada/India). The series is a collaboration with the Film Studies Program in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill, and features a selection of four international films presented in connection with the Ackland’s Close Looks digital initiative. View the selected films on your own or join us for a watch party. Watch parties will be followed by a live post-film panel discussion with scholars from around the globe.
Fire will be available to stream April 9-15, 2021 with a virtual watch party on Tuesday, April 13 at 7:30 p.m. followed by a live panel discussion at 9:30 p.m. We are excited to welcome Dr. Gayatri Gopinath (New York University) for our post-film panel, who will be in conversation with Martin L. Johnson (UNC-Chapel Hill). Register for free tickets below to receive a link to stream the film and a link to attend the panel via Zoom on April 13.
About Fire:
Radha (Shabana Azmi) is unwavering in her devotion to her husband Ashok (Kulbushan Kharbanda), despite their sexless arranged marriage. For 15 years Radha has been the consummate Indian wife while Ashok, under the guidance of a spiritual leader, is attempting to rid himself completely of any form of desire. Meanwhile, Ashok’s brother Jatin (Jaaved Jaaferi) has brought home his new wife Sita (Nandita Das), but is unwilling to give up his relationship with his Chinese girlfriend. Added to the mix are Biji (Kushal Rekhi), Ashok and Jatin’s infirm mother, who keeps a watchful eye over the family, and Mundu (Ranjit Chowdhry), who works in the family’s restaurant and video store under their small apartment. Slowly, Sita’s presence causes the threads that held the family together to unravel. Each member tries to hang on to a semblance of allegiance to the deeply rooted traditions of Indian family life, while at the same time seeking expression for their own personal needs and desires. Unable to woo her new husband, the young and feisty Sita is the first to question the order of things. Her doubts are contagious, and soon Radha’s devotion begins to waver too. Deprived of their husbands’ affections, the two women draw closer together in ways neither imagined.
Director-writer Deepa Mehta has captured the shifting landscape of the entire Indian subcontinent, where both men and women are caught in the immense tension between the continuity of the extended family and the desire for greater freedom and independence. Lusciously photographed and passionately told, FIRE ignites the senses as well as the emotions.
This event is supported in part by Laughing Gull Foundation.
Fire Watch Parties | Tweet along with Ackland and UNC Film Studies using #AcklandFilmForum
7:30 p.m. Watch Party
9:30 p.m. Panel
Link to the panel is provided with registration. Streaming links will be sent at a later date. Registration is open!

Ackland Film Forum Watch Party & Panel for "A Fantastic Woman"
2021-04-27 19:30 - 22:30 | Zoom (Link Provided with Ticket), United States
Join us for the final film in the Ackland Film Forum’s Global Queer Cinema Series, A Fantastic Woman (Sebastian Lelio, 2017, Chile). The series is a collaboration with the Film Studies Program in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill, and features a selection of four international films presented in connection with the Ackland’s Close Looks digital initiative. View the selected films on your own or join us for a watch party. Watch parties will be followed by a live post-film panel discussion with scholars from around the globe.
A Fantastic Woman will be available to stream April 23-29, 2021 with a virtual watch party on Tuesday, April 27 at 7:30 p.m. followed by a live panel discussion at 9:30 p.m. We are excited to welcome Dr. Javier García Léon (UNC-Charlotte) for our post-film panel, who will be in conversation with Martin L. Johnson (UNC-Chapel Hill). Register for free tickets below to receive a link to stream the film and a link to attend the panel via Zoom on April 27.
About A Fantastic Woman:
Marina and Orlando are in love and planning for the future. Marina is a young waitress and aspiring singer. Orlando is 20 years older than her, and owns a printing company. After celebrating Marina’s birthday one evening, Orlando falls seriously ill. Marina rushes him to the emergency room, but he passes away just after arriving at the hospital. Instead of being able to mourn her lover, suddenly Marina is treated with suspicion. The doctors and Orlando’s family don’t trust her. A woman detective investigates Marina to see if she was involved in his death. Orlando’s ex-wife forbids her from attending the funeral. And to make matters worse, Orlando’s son threatens to throw Marina out of the flat she shared with Orlando. Marina is a trans woman and for most of Orlando’s family, her sexual identity is an aberration, a perversion. So Marina struggles for the right to be herself. She battles the very same forces that she has spent a lifetime fighting just to become the woman she is now – a complex, strong, forthright and fantastic woman.
This event is supported in part by Laughing Gull Foundation.
A Fantastic Woman Watch Party | Tweet along with Ackland and UNC Film Studies using #AcklandFilmForum
7:30 p.m. Watch Party
*Please note there is a space between the letters and numbers in your Username*
9:30 p.m. Panel
Link to the panel is provided with registration. Streaming links will be sent at a later date. Registration is open!

Virtual Fundraiser: Treasures from the Cellar
2021-05-12 18:30 - 20:00 | Zoom, United States
The Ackland curators have selected their favorite “treasure” from the Museum’s collection not currently on view, and Wine Feed, local wine bar in Durham and Raleigh, has paired each piece of art to a specially selected wine and a gourmet chocolate bar from Raleigh’s Videri Chocolate Factory.
Price includes live curator-led presentations and instructor-led tastings, 3 full bottles of wine, 3 gourmet chocolate bars and a recording of the program to enjoy at your leisure. Only one purchase needed per household so you can share the wine and chocolate! All goods available for curbside pickup. Delivery and shipping available for some areas.
$50-$80 of the price will go directly to support education and public programs at the Ackland. Feel free to give an additional donation at checkout!
Thank you to our event sponsors:
Smith Freeman & Austin Scarlett
Ella & Atticus Parrott
Stephen M. Cumbie & Druscilla French, PhD
Alice & John May

Curator's Tour of "Drawing Attention"
2021-06-19 14:00 - 15:00 | Ackland Art Museum, 101 S. Columbia Street, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, United States
Join Drawing Attention curator and Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs Peter Nisbet for an in-person tour of the exhibition.
Space is limited and registration is required below. Participants must adhere to the Ackland’s current visitor policies, including wearing a mask while in the Museum and practicing social distancing.
This tour will be offered a second time on Saturday, June 26, at 2:00 p.m.
About Drawing Attention
In its collections, exhibitions, and programs, the Ackland has always paid special attention to works on paper. This exhibition presents around seventy European and American drawings, watercolors, and collages, selected from well over 570 acquired both by gift and by purchase over the past twelve years.
The works in the exhibition showcase a broad chronological span, from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries, and a variety of techniques and functions. The display includes works by a wide range of artists, including Domenichino, Jan van Goyen, Thomas Gainsborough, Edgar Degas, Otto Dix, Robert Motherwell, Thornton Dial, Marcel Dzama, and Lauren Frances Adams. The works are presented in ten thematic sections: Varieties of Portraiture; American Abstraction of the 1960s; Fantasy and Transformation; Image and Text in Contemporary Art; German Modernism; Christian Piety; Landscapes and Architectures; Cartoon and Caricature; Sketches and Studies in Nineteenth-Century France and Britain; and a special wall devoted to Very Recent Arrivals which can accommodate new acquisitions made even during the run of the show.
Drawing Attention, organized by Peter Nisbet, deputy director for curatorial affairs, has been made possible by generous support from the Ackland’s National Advisory Board.

Curator's Tour of "Drawing Attention"
2021-06-26 14:00 - 15:00 | Ackland Art Museum, 101 S. Columbia Street, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, United States
Join Drawing Attention curator and Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs Peter Nisbet for an in-person tour of the exhibition.
Space is limited and registration is required below. Participants must adhere to the Ackland’s current visitor policies, including wearing a mask while in the Museum and practicing social distancing.
If this event reaches capacity and you’d like to join the waitlist, please email acklandRSVP@unc.edu.
About Drawing Attention
In its collections, exhibitions, and programs, the Ackland has always paid special attention to works on paper. This exhibition presents around seventy European and American drawings, watercolors, and collages, selected from well over 570 acquired both by gift and by purchase over the past twelve years.
The works in the exhibition showcase a broad chronological span, from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries, and a variety of techniques and functions. The display includes works by a wide range of artists, including Domenichino, Jan van Goyen, Thomas Gainsborough, Edgar Degas, Otto Dix, Robert Motherwell, Thornton Dial, Marcel Dzama, and Lauren Frances Adams. The works are presented in ten thematic sections: Varieties of Portraiture; American Abstraction of the 1960s; Fantasy and Transformation; Image and Text in Contemporary Art; German Modernism; Christian Piety; Landscapes and Architectures; Cartoon and Caricature; Sketches and Studies in Nineteenth-Century France and Britain; and a special wall devoted to Very Recent Arrivals which can accommodate new acquisitions made even during the run of the show.
Drawing Attention, organized by Peter Nisbet, deputy director for curatorial affairs, has been made possible by generous support from the Ackland’s National Advisory Board.

Curator's Conversation: Introduction to "Visions of Venice"
2021-07-09 15:30 - 16:30 | Zoom (Link Provided with Ticket), United States
Join Dana E. Cowen, Sheldon Peck Curator for European and American Art before 1950, for an in-depth look at Visions of Venice. In this virtual discussion, participants will learn more about the circumstances of Whistler’s 1879 trip to Venice, his unique views of the floating city, his experimental working method, and how his works were received back in London.
Visions of Venice: Etchings by James McNeill Whistler from the Collection of Ambassador C. Boyden Gray showcases thirty of Whistler’s etchings of Venice and explores some of the artist’s most picturesque and atmospheric views of the city. Through his use of varied lines, compelling compositional motifs, and creative printing techniques, Whistler depicted sites unknown to the average tourist, such as back alleyways, obscure canals, and working-class neighborhoods, that challenged the expectations of nineteenth-century viewers and still captivate us today.

Family & Friends Sunday: Whistler's World
2021-07-25 13:00 - 17:00 | Ackland Art Museum, 101 S. Columbia Street, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, United States
Visit us virtually or find art activity kits to enjoy with your friends or family group in the galleries.
This month, enjoy art-inspired activities inspired by James McNeill Whistler’s etchings in Visions of Venice including:
FREE FAMILY ACTIVITY KIT | MUSEUM LOBBY

Pick up our Visions of Venice Family Activity Art Kit and try your hand at scratchboard art! Quantities are limited; one per person.
ART MAKING ACTIVITIES | EXPLORE AT HOME
D.I.Y. Scratch Art (ages 4 and up)
Foil Engraving
CURATOR’S CONVERSATION: “Visions of Venice” with Dana E. Cowen
Watch the Ackland’s Sheldon Peck Curator of European and American Art before 1950, Dana E. Cowen, as she speaks about Visions of Venice.
VIRTUAL TOUR OF THE PEACOCK ROOM | 2:30 P.M. EDT
Join the Ackland as we ‘visit’ the Freer Gallery of Art in D.C., space is limited to 15 households. The tour will be one hour in length and suitable for all ages.
The Peacock Room and American Art
Freer Gallery of Art founder Charles Lang Freer did not only acquire diverse holdings of Asian art; he also assembled outstanding examples of American art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today, the Freer Gallery of Art houses the world’s largest collection of works by James McNeill Whistler, including his famed Peacock Room.
Registration will open on June 18th. Email acklandrsvp@unc.edu with any registration issues. A Zoom link will be provided in the days leading up to the online tour.
WHISTLER’S NORTH CAROLINA CONNECTION
Whistler’s mother, Anna, was born in Wilmington, North Carolina. She is the subject of his famous work, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, commonly known as Whistler’s Mother. The piece resides in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France.
Read several of her letters published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1925. Her final letter in this ten-page document indicates that her son, James, is about to travel to Venice to make a set of twelve etchings – sound familiar?

Close Looks Conversational Tour: "10 Trashy Ideas about the Environment" by the Guerrilla Girls
2021-09-02 12:30 - 13:15 | Ackland Art Museum, 101 S. Columbia Street, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, United States
Join Erin Dickey, Ackland Graduate Teaching Fellow, for an informal conversation about the Guerrilla Girls’s 10 Trashy Ideas about the Environment, a work featured in the Ackland’s Close Looks project. Plan to look closely and think collectively.
Registration is limited. Sign up for free tickets to this in-person program below.
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All visitors to the Ackland and its programs must wear a mask (ages 2 and above) and should familiarize themselves with the Ackland’s latest visitor protocols. We look forward to seeing you back in the galleries!

Artist Conversation: Christopher Myers
2021-09-17 15:30 - 16:30 | Ackland Art Museum, 101 S. Columbia Street, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, United States
Join us for a virtual conversation between artist Christopher Myers and the Ackland’s Lauren Turner, assistant curator for the collection. Myers’s work Fish Pieta (2020)(seen at right) is a new acquisition in the Museum’s permanent collection and is featured in the 2021-2022 Close Looks series. In this free Zoom webinar, we’ll hear from Myers about this recently-acquired work and how it fits into his larger body of work exploring global cultural exchange.
Get free tickets to this virtual webinar below! Registered participants will receive a Zoom link in the email provided.
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Christopher Myers is an artist and writer who lives in New York. While he is widely acclaimed for his work with literature for young people, he is also an accomplished fine artist who has lectured and exhibited internationally. He writes, “I’ve been asking the question lately, ‘What does it mean to be an artist whose work is rooted in the experience of global cultural exchange?”
More than the simple small-world market-driven exchanges that mark some artists, whose practices are rooted in the anthropological or outsourcing models of cultural exchange, he is interested in the aesthetic bridges that have been built organically across cultures, classes, and geographies, and has been creating work in those in-between spaces for years. His practice can be divided into two categories, work by his own hands that lives in the syncretic, the hybrid, and the improvised, and collaborations with artisans from around the globe, extending the conversation of cultural movement across continents and artistic milieus.
He has worked with traditional shadow puppet makers in Jogjakarta, silversmiths in Khartoum, conceptual video artists in Vietnam, young musicians in New Orleans, woodcarvers in Accra, weavers in Luxor and many other artists, who he sees as all being part of one large conversation about the movement of culture, and the ways that languages are borrowed globally, traded from South to South, in order to address the specific local concerns of people that have been thrust into contexts that range far beyond their locality.
From https://www.kalyban.com/
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Live closed captioning will be provided for this event.

UNC Family Weekend Tour
2021-10-03 13:00 - 13:30 | Ackland Art Museum, 101 S. Columbia Street, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, United States
Welcome Carolina Families!
Meet in the lobby for a 30-minute, guided tour of the Ackland Art Museum’s collection led by an Ackland Student Guide. Space is limited.
This event is planned in connection with UNC’s Family Weekend (Oct 1-3). We welcome visiting UNC families as well as members of the public.

Guided Tour: Buddha and Shiva, Lotus and Dragon
2021-10-15 13:30 - 14:00 | Ackland Art Museum, 101 S. Columbia Street, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, United States
Meet in the lobby for a 30-minute, guided tour exploring highlights of our current special exhibition Buddha and Shiva, Lotus and Dragon: Masterworks from the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection at Asia Society.
Advance registration required; space is limited.

Guided Tour: Buddha and Shiva, Lotus and Dragon
2021-10-22 13:30 - 14:00, 2021-10-29 13:30 - 14:00, 2021-11-04 13:30 - 14:00 | Ackland Art Museum, 101 S. Columbia Street, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, United States
Meet in the lobby for a 30-minute, guided tour exploring highlights of our current special exhibition Buddha and Shiva, Lotus and Dragon: Masterworks from the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection at Asia Society.
Advance registration required; space is limited.
This program is supported by the Orange County Arts Commission.

Artist Conversation: Zig Jackson
2021-10-27 13:00 - 14:00 | Zoom, United States
Join us for a virtual conversation between artist Zig Jackson and the Ackland’s Lauren Turner, assistant curator for the collection. Jackson’s photograph Entering Zig’s Indian Reservation, China Basin, San Francisco, CA is featured in the Ackland’s 2021-2022 Close Looks series. In this free virtual conversation, we’ll hear from Jackson about this 1997 work, others in the series and about how it fits into his larger body of photography.
Register below for a free ticket. A Zoom link will be sent to all registered participants via email.
Zig Jackson (Rising Buffalo) is a photographer of Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara descent who was raised on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. Though art was always part of his life, he began formally learning sketching, painting, and then photography during his primary and second education within the government Indian boarding school systems. Jackson earned a bachelor’s degree in education at Northeastern Oklahoma State, while also studying with several area artists, before pursuing his interest in photography through continued studies at the University of New Mexico. In 1994, Jackson received a Master of Fine Arts in photography from San Francisco Art Institute. He is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards and grants including a residential fellowship at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California; a Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Grant for excellence in the photographic arts, which culminated with an exhibition, “Entering Zig’s Indian Reservation,” at the American Indian Contemporary Arts center in San Francisco; a National Millennium Survey Grant; and the inaugural Beaumont Newhall Award for Photographic Excellence from the New Mexico Humanities Council. In 2005, Jackson became the first Native American photographer collected by the Library of Congress, when twelve of his images were accessioned by its Prints and Photographs Division. Jackson has taught photography at Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, at San Francisco State University and UC Davis, and beginning in 1999 at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he is now professor emeritus.
This program is supported by the Orange County Arts Commission.
