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After years of delay due to the global pandemic, Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948 – 1960 debuted at the Nasher Museum during the summer of 2022. We opened our doors to the exhibition with free admission and live-streamed our press preview tour for our online fans. Photo by J Caldwell.

In this report, spanning July 1, 2021, through June 30, 2022, the museum opened to the public with free admission as pandemic restrictions lifted. Words, pictures and numbers tell stories of a lively, productive year. The museum acquired a number of amazing works of art. Of these, 33 works are by artists new to the collection. American Dance Festival, our partner for the past 10 years, activated our Great Hall with two live dance performances. Nine artists gave gallery talks and eight artists took part in a museum podcast. Nearly 40,000 people visited the galleries between September and June. Of those, about 3,275 Duke students and faculty visited by appointment to study art and visit the galleries. Eight Duke students earned credit for museum internships. We welcomed back the first guided K-12 tour in two years and hosted the first teacher workshop in two years.

From the Director

Nasher Museum Director Trevor Schoonmaker poses with MamaRay, with Joan Kahn, Stefanie and Douglas Kahn
Nasher Museum Director Trevor Schoonmaker poses with MamaRay, a bronze sculpture by Wangechi Mutu, with (from left) Joan Kahn, Stefanie and Douglas Kahn (P’11, P’13). Photo by J Caldwell.

I am very pleased to present our 2022 online Annual Report (July 1, 2021, through June 30, 2022) — a year of new inspiration, and even greater inclusion and accessibility as the museum reopened to the public with free admission.

Free Admission for All
Our biggest news of the year was the gift of $1 million by New York art collectors and Duke graduates Jennifer McCracken New and her husband Jason New to grant free general admission to all visitors. Their enormously generous gift allows us to continue to create a place of welcome and belonging for everyone. Now more than ever, we must remove barriers to our collections, exhibitions and programs. Through art, we can build the inclusive, diverse community that we want to see, one that is truly reflective of society. This extraordinary gift embodies that goal!

First Commissioned Sculpture
We were excited to welcome into our space a monumental bronze sculpture, MamaRay by Wangechi Mutu—our first sculptural commission. MamaRay is a triumphant goddess figure, a protective guardian who further connects our building to the surrounding green landscape and the sky above our glass-and-steel roof. We are so grateful to Joan Kahn, who provided funds that made the commission possible.

 

A YEAR IN PHOTOS

Several billboards popped up around Durham during the run of Spirit in the Land. To the four directions, to the earth and sky, everything as witness. It is a gesture of being in the world, and the world becoming part of us, activating our relationship to the environment. This connection with and reverence for the natural world has always been with me.” –Meryl McMaster, excerpt from her exhibition catalogue essay Photo by J Caldwell.
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Museums Need to Be Braver. Here’s How College and University Art Galleries Can Offer the Sector at Large a Roadmap for Reinvention

The Nasher, at Duke University, emphasizes collecting works by artists who have been historically excluded by mainstream arts institutions.

view article on Artnet | Published July 18, 2022

The Art Minute Season 2

One minute, one work of art, one personal story.
In Season 2 of The Art Minute, we hear from four Nasher Museum Security Ambassadors, Edwin Smith, Thomas Hamilton, Jon Carpenter and Joseph Lallier.

Subtitles are available by toggling CC on the video player.

Highlights from Recent Acquisitions

Acquisitions to the Collection

Featured Featured exhibition

Beyond the Surface: Collage, Mixed Media and Textile Works from the Collection

June 16, 2022 – May 14, 2023

This exhibition includes approximately 40 works, primarily from the Nasher Museum’s collection. With a focus on collage, mixed media and textile works, Beyond the Surface explores how artists bring together dispar...

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For Generations, African American Women Have Used Quilting as a Powerful Tool of Survival, Resistance, and Artistic Expression

The concentric squares that form a familiar quilt pattern called “Housetop” in a 1970 quilt by Nettie Pettway Young exemplifies the abstracted style that sets Gee’s Bend quilts apart from others. The quilt is currently hel...

view article on Artnews | Published November 23, 2022

For African Americans, the practice of quilting not only preserves memory through the use of repurposed fabrics, but also plays a vital role in protest, as artists have used—and continue to use—the medium to assert their voice to claim identity, tackle racism, and confront sexism

Colony Little, ArtNews
Featured Featured exhibition

David Levinthal: Baseball

June 18, 2022 – January 15, 2023

David Levinthal: Baseball is an installation of large-format Polaroid photographs that capture some of the most iconic moments in the history of baseball through Levinthal’s signature use of lifelike figurines. Ba...

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A Medium for Memories: How Duke’s Nasher Museum Uses Art to Help People with Dementia

The Reflections tour offers benefits for caregivers as well. Not only do they get to see their loved ones animated and interacting with art, but they also can find a sense of relief in simply being present. For at least a ...

view article on Vertices | Published December 13, 2022

I think museumgoers sometimes mistakenly assume that you have to find the ‘right answer’ or hidden meaning in art by digging into hidden details on the canvas. But fundamentally, reflecting on art simply means paying attention to your immediate, present reaction to the work in front of you.

Nikhita Nanduri, Vertices
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$62M Announced for Art and Humanities Projects Nationwide

Newly supported projects include an exhibition at the Nasher Museum "that uses contemporary artworks to examine climate crisis from cultural and identity standpoints."

view article on Hyperallergic | Published January 12, 2023

Featured Featured exhibition

Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948 – 1960

August 25, 2022 – January 08, 2023

Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948 – 1960 is the first major museum exhibition to investigate the early work of one of the most celebrated American artists of the 20th century. The exhibition tells the ...

Artist Allison Zuckerman on Roy Lichtenstein

"Lichtenstein has been a major influence on my artistic life journey. I loved his work as a child, and I love it as an adult. It is an iconic representation of American culture."

—Allison Zuckerman, in her gallery talk within Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948 - 1960

Watch the Gallery Talk on Instagram

History in the Making

"Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948 – 1960" is a 12-minute mini documentary video about the first major museum exhibition to reintroduce a beloved Pop artist to U.S. audiences. Most Americans know Lichtenstein for his comics-inspired Pop imagery. In this new video, the camera sweeps across Lichtenstein’s early paintings, sculptures and works on paper rarely seen, while co-curators Elizabeth Finch and Marshall N. Price offer scholarly insights and art historical context. Viewers catch glimpses of the late artist’s paint jars and canvases in his well-preserved West Greenwich Village studio, where Jack Cowart, founding executive director of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, shares personal memories of the artist’s humor, ambivalence and loyalty about preserving his own early work. Surprise and amazement registers on the faces of young artists Nina Chanel Abney, Pedro Lasch, Stacy Lynn Waddell and Allison Zuckerman, who see examples of Lichtenstein’s early paintings and drawings for the first time. The contemporary artists, who studied Lichtenstein in art school, share feelings about their own “cringey” early work. The video Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making examines the period before the dot; that is, Lichtenstein’s signature use of Benday dots in his Pop paintings. Viewers will gain an understanding of the crucial role this work played in his maturation into one of the masters of Pop art. A human story emerges, relatable to any viewer who grew into a profession over the course of many years.
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Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Donates 186 Artworks to Five Museums Ahead of Artist’s Centennial

The Nasher will receive works from later that decade showing his adoption of Abstract Expressionism.

view article on ARTnews | Published June 01, 2023

Featured Featured exhibition

The Power of Portraiture: Recent Acquisitions

September 24, 2022 – March 19, 2023

Portraiture has long been an effective mode of artistic expression. A portrait is more than a mere rendering of an individual or group of people, and often serves as a revealing window onto the sitters’ individuality. Port...

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Nasher Museum Appoints Three Key Roles

Three new hires in key positions at the Nasher Museum will strengthen community outreach, develop programs that support the museum’s mission and engage in research and interpretation of its fast-growing art collection. Jad...

Published

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Museums Look Locally for Growth and, Sometimes, Survival

Kehinde Wiley, whose vibrant portrait of President Barack Obama hangs in Washington’s National Portrait Gallery, is helping several other museums rebuild their audiences. His Saint John the Baptist II, a huge canv...

view article on The New York Times | Published April 25, 2023

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A Spiritual Connection with Art

Emily Normand likes to ask student visitors what they think about the layout of the Nasher Museum’s building. What about the lack of a grand marble staircase? What about galleries spread out in three separate pavilions? “I...

Published

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Google Arts & Culture Pocket Gallery

For International Museum Day 2023, we partnered with Google Arts & Culture to share a new virtual Pocket Gallery, Helen Frankenthaler: Un Poc...

Published

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Spirit in the Land

February 16 – July 09, 2023

Spirit in the Land is a contemporary art exhibition that examines today’s urgent ecological concerns from a cultural perspective, demonstrating how intricately our identities and natural environments are intertwin...

Artist Interview series: "Spirit in the Land"

We invite you to watch four interviews with artists whose works were part of Spirit in the Land. Filmed on location at the artists' studios.

Featuring: Mel Chin, Maria Berrio, Jim Roche and Alexa Kleinbard .

Subtitles are available by toggling CC on the video player.
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The Nasher Museum of Art’s New Exhibition Offers Deeply Rooted Perspectives on Urgent Ecological Concerns

Discussions about the future of our planet are often framed as either/or scenarios: either we’re going to make progress mitigating climate and environmental challenges, or doomsday is already here.

view article on INDYweek | Published March 08, 2023

It is difficult to be optimistic about the health of our planet. The contemporary works presented [in the exhibition "Spirit in the Land"] don’t suggest it isn’t. Rather, they provide a deep dive into interconnections and highlight the existing supportive web of practices, Indigenous cosmologies, plant medicine, and folkloric remedies.

Pamir Kiciman, INDYWEEK

Artist Artist Monique Verdin on the Modern Art Notes Podcast

"We have been pushed to the ends of the bayous and are now facing some of the most rapid land loss. Every 100 minutes a football field is lost from our shores." —Artist Monique Verdin, Houma Nation

Artist Monique Verdin, Houma Nation, joins host Tyler Green to discuss her work on a live taping of The Modern Art Notes podcast at the Nasher Museum. Verdin’s work is on view in Spirit in the Land.

Artist Sheldon Scott on the Modern Art Notes Podcast

Before you listen to the podst, watch an excerpt of Scott’s Portrait, no. 1 man (day clean ta sun down) on vimeo.

Artist Sheldon Scott joins host Tyler Green to discuss his work on The Modern Art Notes podcast. Scott’s work is part of the Nasher Museum’s collection and also on view in Spirit in the Land.
Featured Featured exhibition

Art of Peru

December 03, 2022 – May 13, 2024

This gallery features ceramics, textiles, metalwork and carvings produced by ancient cultures across what is known as present-day Peru. Many on view for the first time, these objects reveal the diverse and sophisticated ar...

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Renzo Ortega on “Art of Peru” at the Nasher Museum

This interview of artist Renzo Ortega was conducted by Julia McHugh, PhD, Trent A. Carmichael Curator of Academic Initiatives at the Nasher Museum. Corn is a repeated motif throughout your art. Why? Corn is a recu...

Published

Featured Featured exhibition

Andy Warhol:
You Look Good in Pictures

April 01 – August 27, 2023

For Andy Warhol, the camera was a device through which he saw the world. The artist was rarely without one, whether it was his beloved portable Polaroid SX-70 instant, a conventional 35mm single lens reflex, or the movie c...

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A New Exhibition Explores Andy Warhol’s Obsessive Relationship With Photography

The Nasher itself encourages visitor photos: “We love selfies best!” a sign in the lobby reads. It echoes Warhol’s credo that every face is capable of iconicity—if you shoot it right.

view article on INDYweek | Published July 03, 2023

The intimacy, the joyful wit of many of the photos, how [Andy] Warhol took many of them in rapid-fire fashion, without looking into the viewfinder. How, for better or worse, he helped pioneer a visual culture of proliferation, of status achieved by widespread media presence.

Harris Wheless, INDYweek

Education Department at a glance, July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023

In-person Tours

1,626

Adult Guided Tours

51

Adult Self-Guided Tours

811

Public Tours

412

Reflections Tours

2,030

K-12 Tours

454

K-12 Self-guided Tours

Virtual Tours

131

Adult Virtual Tours

25

Reflections Virtual Tours

587

K-12 Virtual and Offsite Tours

Teacher Workshops

87

 

Featured Featured exhibition

Love & Anarchy

June 22, 2023 – June 30, 2024

On the surface, love and anarchy may seem like unrelated or even conflicting notions. Love is synonymous with care, compassion, and affection, while anarchy is generally accepted as an absence of authority, a state of diso...

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From Punk Band to Portraits for a King to Gagosian: Honor Titus Breaks Out

Titus’s work is now in the collections of Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, where his painting “Portable Prince,” acquired in May, is currently on view in the show “L...

view article on The New York Times | Published July 18, 2023

Financials, July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023

Donor List, July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023

In Memoriam

Featured Featured Articles

In Memoriam: Amanda Kuruc, 1976-2023

Longtime Nasher colleague and friend Amanda Kuruc Koelling died after a brief illness on March 8, 2023, in Durham, N.C. She was 46. Amanda was the museum’s chief grant writer, bringing more than $2.7 million in funding fro...

Published

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Remembering Katharine Caecilia Lee Reid

Katharine Caecilia Lee Reid, longtime supporter and friend of the Nasher Museum, died on September 22, 2022, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, from complications after heart surgery. She was 80. Katharine worked in art museu...

Published

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Rafael Viñoly—museum ‘starchitect’ who believed in experience over aesthetics—has died, aged 78

Viñoly's works for the world of art and culture include the Kimmel Center for Performing Arts, Philadelphia (completed 2001, a vast barrel-vaulted statement in steel and glass, housing two auditoriums); the Nasher Museum o...

view article on The Art Newspaper | Published March 06, 2023

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