Looking for a new reason to visit Asheville, N.C.? The eye-popping $24+ million Asheville Art Museum project will (https://www.ashevilleart.org/) focus on American Art of the 20th and 21st centuries and work from Western North Carolina and the Southeast.
Three reasons to consider the Asheville Art Museum for summer, fall and holiday travel:
1. Appalachia Now! An Interdisciplinary Survey of Contemporary Art in Southern Appalachia
will be the inaugural special exhibition on view through 2019. New York-based interdisciplinary scholar and curator Jason Andrew considered more than 700 artists from the Southern Appalachian states of North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. After 55 studio visits and an open call, which garnered more than 400 applicants, Andrew selected 50 diverse working artists. Mediums span photography, ceramics, glass, performance, painting, new media, music, sculpture and more.
2. Glass facade, rooftop café, and more…
The Museum’s expansion includes a stunning glass facade and art-filled atrium, an oculus window, sculpture terrace and rooftop café worthy of Asheville’s foodtopian values. Henry Richardson’s glass sculpture, Reflections on Unity, has been chosen for the first public art installation on the plaza in front of the Museum.
Friends enjoy wine on the new rooftop terrace. Photo by David Huff CreativeFriends enjoy wine on the new rooftop terrace. Photo by David Huff Creative. | A visitor taking a hard-hat tour enjoys the view from the oculus in the Collection Hall. Photo by Asheville Art Museum.
3. Intersections in American Art Offers a Fresh, Diverse Look at the Collection
The Museum jumpstarts a conversation between the viewer, the region and American art with this exhibition. A grant from the Henry Luce Foundation allowed a diverse group, including an N.C. poet laureate, to help reinterpret the Collection with ideas derived from Black Mountain College.
Photo by David Huff
Note: Part of the project includes historic preservation of the 1926 Pack Library as the new Education Center
This is so exciting! Thanks for sharing:) I will let you know as soon as we can share more details about the cafe!
Hi Lindsey,
I’m in the “can’t wait camp” for everything Asheville Art Museum, but have a special place in my heart for the rooftop cafe, of course. 🙂