The North Carolina Museum of Art occupies a 164-acre campus off Blue Ridge Road in west Raleigh, near the State Fairgrounds. It pairs a free permanent collection covering 5,000 years of art with one of the largest art parks in the country, which is why locals and visitors come back year-round.
Inside the West Building, designed by Thomas Phifer and Partners, skylights fill the galleries with diffused daylight. The collection moves from Egyptian funerary objects and Greco-Roman sculpture to European Old Masters, African art, and American works. The museum also has a dedicated gallery of Jewish ceremonial art, which few U.S. art museums offer. Rodin bronzes line the interior court and the reflecting-pool garden outside. In the Ann and Jim Goodnight Museum Park, trails lead to large outdoor works, including Thomas Sayre’s earth-cast rings, Gyre, and Chris Drury’s Cloud Chamber for the Trees and Sky, a stone hut that projects the treetops onto its interior walls. From spring through fall, the Joseph M. Bryan Jr. Theater in the park hosts outdoor concerts and films.
Visitor Highlights & Practical Info
General admission and parking are free. Special exhibitions require timed tickets, so book them online ahead of weekend visits. The galleries close on Mondays, and the park stays open daily from dawn to dusk. For quieter galleries, arrive at opening on a weekday. Plan park walks for mornings in spring or fall, because summer afternoons get hot and the trails have little shade. Cyclists can ride in on the House Creek Greenway, which connects to the Reedy Creek Trail and William B. Umstead State Park. Check the concert calendar early, since popular summer shows sell out.
