The North Carolina Central
University Art Museum is North Carolina's premier museum of
African American art. It is known especially for its nineteenth-century
masterpieces such as Robert Scott Duncanson's Cottage Pass
Opposite Ben Lomond (1866) and works by other masters
such as Edward Mitchell Bannister and Henry Ossawa Tanner.
Work in the permanent collection is the foundation for major
exhibitions, programs, and publications and is open for research
and study.
The twentieth-century segment of the collection includes a
generous number of artists active during the period known
as the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s and the WPA
period which followed.
The exceptional works of Richmond Barthe, Romare Bearden,
Robert Blackburn, Selma Burke, Hale Woodruff, Aaron Douglas,
Jacob Lawrence, Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett and Norman
Lewis are among those found in the permanent collection. Although
these names resonate with the aforementioned time period,
the permanent collection includes works from much later periods
as well.
The
permanent collection also contains a number of contemporary
works produced during the later part of the twentieth century.
Among artists active in the last half of the century are Sam
Gilliam, Barkley Hendricks, Caryl Henry, Geoffrey Holder,
Richard Hunt, Juan Logan, Al Loving, Miriam Schapiro, William
Artis, Minnie Evans, Pheoris West and Kerry James Marshall.
