Terra Collection-in-Residence: Ackland Art Museum

Ackland Art Museum, founded in 1958, is the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s local museum with a global outlook. Always free, the Ackland is a vital teaching resource that uses its collection to empower audiences to get close to art. The Ackland strives to be playful, rigorous, and responsive in order to nurture curiosity, encourage creativity, and disrupt convention.

The museum uses the Terra Foundation loans as primary source material for university classes in Art History, American Studies, African Studies, African American Studies, Diaspora Studies, English and Comparative Literature, and History. Each of the four paintings on loan represents either an artist or artistic period not currently found in the Ackland’s permanent collection or a complementary work by an artist already represented in the collection. The loans enable the museum to craft narratives that spur meaningful discussion among its audiences.

Ammi Phillips’s Girl in a Red Dress (c. 1835) from the Terra Foundation hangs near a portrait by Gilbert Stuart from the Ackland’s permanent collection. The pairing raises questions about artistic style and childhood in the early nineteenth-century United States. Robert Henri’s Sylvester (1914) extends the theme of childhood into the twentieth century and raises issues of function, patronage, culture, class, and race. These two paintings expanded teaching opportunities and complemented an existing focus on portraiture and identity.

“The Terra Collection-in-Residence loans have been transformative. Each painting provided new and valuable opportunities to enrich visitors’ experiences,” said Carolyn Allmendinger, Interim Director and Director of Education and Interpretation, Ackland Museum of Art. “Two of the loans complemented an existing focus on portraiture and identity, centering especially on portraits of children. They have been popular with K–12 groups and have expanded teaching opportunities.”

The museum has displayed Archibald Motley’s Between Acts (1935) from the Terra Foundation alongside its own painting by Motley, Mending Socks (1924). Museum staff members have long hoped to see Motley’s portrait of his grandmother next to one of his more famous works depicting musical and theatrical themes. University students studying African American art gathered regularly at the Ackland to discuss these two paintings.

Four paintings are on loan for a period of four years (March 2023–March 2027).