The Ackland Art Museum is celebrating its 60th birthday by unwrapping some presents and unveiling new projects. Celebrations started Wednesday with an interactive exhibit around campus and a private opening of their new exhibit, “Birthday Presents.”
“Birthday Presents” showcases 60 individual pieces of art gifted to the museum by private donors for its 60th anniversary. The pieces come from a variety of genres and mediums, ranging from a beaded headdress from Zulu culture to Lee Krasner’s prints for the 1960s New York Hilton hotel.
“What you have here is a kaleidoscope of the Ackland — an attempt, as I say, to add batteries, recharge the batteries, to strengthen our ability in the future to make connections and provide opportunities of a range of diversity that I think is unmatched in the Triangle,” said Peter Nisbet, the Ackland’s curator.
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Nisbet worked with the rest of the Ackland team for the past year to receive these gifts from different donors across the world. One piece will be flying in from London on Thursday.
Another part of the celebration is a 15-foot-diameter red ball that will be rolling around campus for the next week. The RedBall Project is the longest-running street art project in the country. This marks the first time the RedBall has been in North Carolina, and the first time it has been on a university campus. Today, the RedBall can be found at South Building.
“For me, the piece is very much about seeing your environment in a new way for a day and also that sense of exploration of something you think is familiar,” said Kurt Perschke, the artist behind the RedBall. “We’ve got some sites that will hopefully be surprising, ones you might expect and kind of in between.”