North Carolina Museum of Art

The North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) is an art museum in Raleigh, North Carolina which opened in 1956 as the first major museum collection in the country to be formed by State legislation and funding. Since the initial 1947 appropriation that established its collection, the Museum has continued to be a model of enlightened public policy with free admission to the permanent collection. Today, it encompasses a collection that spans more than 5,000 years of artistic work from antiquity to the present, an amphitheater for outdoor performances, and a variety of celebrated exhibitions and public programs. The Museum features more than 40 galleries as well as more than a dozen major works of art in the nation’s largest museum park with 164-acres (0.66 km2). One of the leading art museums in the American South, the NCMA recently completed a major expansion winning international acclaim for innovative approaches to energy-efficient design.

History

In 1924, the North Carolina State Art Society formed to generate interest in creating an art museum for the state. In 1928 the society acquired funds and 75 paintings were first displayed in a series of temporary art exhibition spaces in the Agriculture Building in Raleigh in 1929. In 1939, NCMA was moved to the former Supreme Court building. In 1947 the state legislature appropriated $1 million to purchase a collection of artworks for the people of North Carolina. The money was used to purchase 139 European and American works. The Samuel H. Kress Foundation matched the appropriation with a gift of 71 works, primarily from the Italian Renaissance. The 1947 state earmarking of funds for an art collection was the first in the United States.

North Carolina

North Carolina (ⁱ/ˌnɔːrθ kærəˈlaɪnə/) is a state in the southeastern region of the United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west, Virginia to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. North Carolina is the 28th most extensive and the 9th most populous of the 50 United States. North Carolina is known as the Tar Heel State and the Old North State.

North Carolina is composed of 100 counties. Its two largest metropolitan areas are among the top ten fastest-growing in the country: its capital, Raleigh, and its largest city, Charlotte. In the past five decades, North Carolina's economy has undergone a transition from reliance upon tobacco, textiles, and furniture-making to a more diversified economy with engineering, energy, biotechnology, and finance sectors.

North Carolina has a wide range of elevations, from sea level on the coast to 6,684 feet (2,037 m) at Mount Mitchell, the highest point in North America east of the Mississippi River. The climate of the coastal plains is strongly influenced by the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the state falls in the humid subtropical climate zone. More than 300 miles (500 km) from the coast, the western, mountainous part of the state has a subtropical highland climate.

Brigham Young University Museum of Art

The Brigham Young University Museum of Art, located in Provo, Utah, United States is the university's primary art museum and is one of the best attended university-campus art museums in the United States. The museum, which had been discussed for more than fifty years, opened in a 10,000-square-foot (930 m²) space in October 1993 with a large exhibit on the Etruscans. The museum is an integral part of the BYU College of Fine Arts and Communications and provides opportunities for students across the college and the university's campus.

History

After breaking ground two years prior, the museum opened in October 1993 as a location to house BYU's extensive collection of more than 17,000 pieces of art which, due to a lack of space, had never been able to be displayed permanently. The lack of a permanent home had resulted in damage to some of the collection and the loss of more than 900 pieces of art.

According to a 2004 survey, the museum ranked first in attendance among university campus art museums with 334,774 visitors. Among all art museums, the museum comes in 31st in attendance out of 157 member art museums from the United States, Canada and Mexico. The museum's philosophy of reaching out to the students and the community has been cited as one of the reasons for its success to date. In addition to having the largest university museum attendance, the museum also has the highest level of student attendance because its staff works closely with faculty to incorporate the museum into school curriculum.

Raleigh, North Carolina

Raleigh (/ˈrɑːli/; RAH-lee) is the capital of the state of North Carolina as well as the seat of Wake County in the United States. It is the second most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte. Raleigh is known as the "City of Oaks" for its many oak trees, which line the streets in the heart of the city. The city covers a land area of 142.8 square miles (370 km²). The U.S. Census Bureau estimated the city's population to be 439,896 as of July 1, 2014. It is also one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. The city of Raleigh is named after Sir Walter Raleigh, who established the lost Roanoke Colony in present-day Dare County.

Raleigh is home to North Carolina State University and is part of the Research Triangle area, together with Durham (home of Duke University) and Chapel Hill (home of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). The "Triangle" nickname originated after the 1959 creation of the Research Triangle Park, located in Durham & Wake Counties partway between the three cities and their universities. The Research Triangle region encompasses the U.S. Census Bureau's Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Combined Statistical Area (CSA), which had an estimated population of 2,037,430 in 2013. The Raleigh Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) had an estimated population of 1,214,516 in 2013.

Art

Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts – artworks, expressing the author's imaginative or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power. In their most general form these activities include the production of works of art, the criticism of art, the study of the history of art, and the aesthetic dissemination of art.

The oldest form of art are visual arts, which include creation of images or objects in fields including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and other visual media. Architecture is often included as one of the visual arts; however, like the decorative arts, it involves the creation of objects where the practical considerations of use are essential—in a way that they usually are not in a painting, for example. Music, theatre, film, dance, and other performing arts, as well as literature and other media such as interactive media, are included in a broader definition of art or the arts. Until the 17th century, art referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts or sciences. In modern usage after the 17th century, where aesthetic considerations are paramount, the fine arts are separated and distinguished from acquired skills in general, such as the decorative or applied arts.