Ackland Art Museum facts for kids
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| Established | September 20, 1958 |
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| Location | Chapel Hill, North Carolina |
| Type | Art museum |
| Public transit access | Chapel Hill Transit |
The Ackland Art Museum is a cool place to see art! It's part of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The museum was started because a man named William Hayes Ackland wanted to create an art museum at a university in the South. You can visit the museum for free, and they have lots of events about art and different topics. It's located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, right near the university campus.
How the Museum Started
William Hayes Ackland was from Tennessee and loved collecting art. He wanted to leave money in his will to build an art museum at a Southern university. In 1936, he first thought about Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and Rollins College in Florida. He decided Duke should get the money first.
Ackland wanted to be buried inside the new museum. When he passed away in 1940, Duke University decided not to accept the gift because of this condition.
After Duke said no, Ackland's family went to court to try and get the money for themselves. Rollins College and the University of North Carolina also tried to get the money for their own art museums. It was a long legal fight!
Finally, in 1949, a court decided that UNC-Chapel Hill should receive the money. The gift had grown to $1.4 million. Ackland's remains were moved from Nashville, Tennessee, and he was reburied at the museum at UNC, just as he had wished.
What You Can See: The Collection
The Ackland Art Museum has a huge collection of about 17,000 artworks! They have a lot of amazing Asian art. They also have many works of art on paper, like prints, photographs, and drawings.
You can also find important European artworks, modern art from the 1900s, and art from Africa. They even have pottery made in North Carolina. Some famous artists whose work you can see include Eugène Delacroix, Albrecht Dürer, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí.
In 2024, the museum returned a painting called L'atelier du Maître (which means The Master's workshop) to the family of Armand Dorville. He was a French Jewish art collector whose family was hurt during the Holocaust.
- Select gallery
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Guercino, Assumption of the Virgin
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Jean-Louis Le Barbier, portrait of Mélanie de Forbin-Gardanne, Marquise de Villeneuve-Flayosc (1759-1841)
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Richard Westall's Sword of Damocles (1812)
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Eugène Delacroix, Girl Seated in a Cemetery (1824)
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Hiram Powers, Duff Greene, marble sculpture (1834-1837)
See also
- List of places named after people
