by North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, North Carolina, is free and has three Monets on display. It has a number of other big names, but those somehow didn’t have much of interest to me.
The Museum opened in 1956 and has more than 40 galleries holding a wide-ranging array of painting, sculptures, and antiquities. It was a little jarring, to be honest.
It is situated on 164 acres, which was full of contemporary art sculptures. I’ve learned on this adventure that I usually don’t “get” sculpture gardens, but we were interested in seeing the Cloud Chamber for the Trees and Sky (Chris Drury, 2003) and checking out some birds, so we got a nice walk of the grounds.
The cover photo is The Bridge at Moret, April Morning by Alfred Sisley, 1888.
The Cloud Chamber for the Trees and Sky is an almost completely dark chamber with a pinhole at the top; as light passes through the hole, it reflects a camera obscura image of the trees and sky inside. It was very interesting to transition from “is this it?” to “oh, I see” as our eyes adjusted to the lack of light and could take in the images on the white walls.
