Complications in the state budget have resulted in the museum's Board of Trustees approving a reduction in public hours from 51 hours a week to 39. The new changes include galleries being closed Tuesdays and Friday evenings after 5 p.m., in addition to the usual closing on Mondays.
The financial struggles have forced the museum to decrease its security personnel, and because the museum cannot compensate the remaining employees for overtime work in monitoring its valuable collection, a reduction of hours was necessary. Special events that were scheduled previously will not be affected. "I think it's an opportunity really to focus on customer and visitor service and the quality of our programs," said Director of Communications Rebecca Moore. "Most of our existing programs will continue."
For the 2001-02 fiscal year that ended on June 30, the museum received $4 million from the state and $7.3 million from the NCMA Foundation. According to Moore, the state's appropriation for the upcoming fiscal year will be down about 8 percent from that $4 million.
Despite this budgetary bump in the road, the museum has a new exhibition. The public will be able to view "Selections From 'The Birds of America'" by John James Audubon from July 14 to Dec. 1. The exhibition includes hand-colored prints from the four-volume set as well as two bound double-elephant folios. "The Birds of America" took Audubon 20 years to create and compile. The artist was essentially a romantic figure, sharing a love of nature with his contemporaries in the Hudson River School.
"His gift is both to art and to science, or ornithology, and any number of the birds in the double elephant are extinct," said exhibition curator Huston Paschal, the museum's associate curator of modern art. "He certainly helped draw attention to the need for conversation."
Audubon's pieces will join the exhibitions "The Reverend McKendree Robbins Long: Picture Painter of the Apocalypse," open until Aug. 25, and "Empire of the Sultans: Ottoman Art from the Khalili Collection," on view until July 28.
During the week of July 9-14, the latter exhibition will be accompanied by the work of five acclaimed Turkish artisans, classical music by the Ottoman Court and a lecture by Turkish art authority Henry Glassie. The exhibition itself is courtesy of London art collector Nasser D. Khalili and includes hand-illuminated Qurans, court rugs, ceramic works, armor and textiles of the Ottoman Empire.
"There are very few substantial collections of Islamic art in this country, and certainly none in North Carolina of any great consequence," said exhibition curator John Coffey, the museum's associate director of collections and the curator of American and modern art.
"We've tried with our temporary exhibitions to supplement our own permanent collection and to give people a chance to see really superb art from cultures that they may not be familiar with."
