North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA)

The North Carolina Museum of Art is the State’s art museum, founded in 1947 when the North Carolina General Assembly appropriated $1 million for the purchase of works of art, making North Carolina the first state in the nation to acquire a public art collection. The Museum possesses an exceptional collection of art with particular strengths in European and American painting and sculpture, and rapidly growing holdings in late modern and contemporary art. There are also smaller, but active collections of ancient Egyptian and Classical art, and the arts of Africa and the ancient Americas, as well as a gallery dedicated to Jewish ceremonial art. An active program of exhibitions supplements the collections. The NCMA first opened in 1956 and moved to its present 164-acre park in 1983. A new permanent gallery pavilion, West Building, opened in April 2010.