Carolina Collects: 150 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art from Alumni Collections

September 9, 2011 - December 4, 2011

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Gathered from the private collections of more than 60 alumni of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carolina Collects: 150 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art from Alumni Collections brings together nearly 90 hidden treasures by some of the most renowned artists of the modern era.

From Claude Monet to Alexander Calder, from Louise Bourgeois to Yayoi Kusama, Carolina Collects offers an extraordinary overview of art of the past 150 years through paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and sculptures, many of which have rarely been exhibited.

American artists in Carolina Collects include Marsden Hartley, Thomas Hart Benton, Isamu Noguchi, George Bellows, Louise Nevelson, Arthur Dove, Milton Avery, Alice Neel, Richard Diebenkorn, David Smith, Hans Hofmann, Roy Lichtenstein, Meyer Schapiro, Andy Warhol, Joan Mitchell, Robert Smithson, Alexander Calder, Jasper Johns, Romare Bearden, Louise Bourgeois, Robert Colescott, Martin Puryear, Lynda Benglis, Lee Bontecou, Sam Durant, and Glenn Ligon, among others.

European artists are also a significant presence in the exhibition, among them Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Gustave Doré, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, André Derain, Henri Rousseau, Emil Nolde, El Lissitsky, Gaston Lachaise, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Henry Moore, Giorgio de Chirico, Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz, Olafur Eliasson, and Bridget Riley.

An area, among several, in which Carolina Collects is particularly strong is photography, with photos by Lewis Hine, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Walker Evans, Weegee, O. Winston Link, Sally Mann, Irving Penn, Nan Goldin, Tina Barney, John Coplans, William Wegman, Gabriel Orozco, and others featured.

Carolina Collects will be accompanied by an illustrated publication.

Image Credit: Alexander Calder, American, 1898–1976: Scale on Yellow and Blue, 1972; painted metal. Lent by Peter Mallinson (BA ’82, MBA ’83) and Elisabetta Mallinson. © Calder Foundation, New York / Artist Rights Society (ARS) New York.