Experience art & discover history… from home!
Featuring a variety of artistic challenges, deep-dives, unique gallery tours, program highlights, and youth engagement to connect with you no matter where you are.
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Terra Ludis: Play Ground | Meet Carter Smith
For this week's oral history feature we listen to Carter Smith, Boone native, instructor at Lees McRae University and climbing coach at Center 45 Climbing & Fitness. He's been climbing since before he could walk. We asked him what makes climbing special for him…
Curator’s Corner: Derrick Beasley
Reflecting on current events, we'd like to again bring your attention to the voice and work of exhibiting artist Derrick Beasley. Derrick is a multidisciplinary artist based out of Durham, NC. His art is informed by his background in policy and community organizing, as well as his identity as a black man from the US South. Derrick uses science and speculative fiction to wrestle with the traumas and complexities of those identities and the plight of humanity more broadly.
Terra Ludis: Play Ground | Meet Naturalist Amy Renfranz
Amy Renfranz is a naturalist and writer based out of Seven Devils, NC. You may have read her recurring "Dear Naturalist" column in the Watauga Democrat. In our interview, we asked her to tell us about her favorite memories outdoors.
Curator’s Corner: “Branching Out” featuring Jim Oleson
Jim Oleson is our featured artist this week from our current exhibition, "Branching Out: Works in Wood from North Carolina." Oleson is a sculptor who resides in Chapel Hill, NC. Like several of our other artists, Oleson has a diverse career background outside of being an artist. Learn more about this Medical Doctor, Physicist, and Sculptor in this week’s Curator Corner.
Curator’s Corner | “Branching Out” with Mark Gardner
Mark Gardner is one of featured artists in Branching Out: Works in Wood from North Carolina. Originally from Cincinnati, Mark now resides in Saluda, NC. Both pieces in the museum are detailed with milk paint, a nontoxic, water-based paint that has been utilized for thousands of years.
Oral History Feature: Paul Stahlschmidt
With the parks and trails reopening we reflect on our interview with Conservationist and mountain biker, Paul Stahlschmidt. He reminds us that we need to be mindful of the impact we make on our shared outdoor resources.
Curator’s Corner: Craig Kassan
Craig Kassan dreamed up the idea for this piece, called "Eclipse," during an airplane flight. Learn more about the artist and this piece for today’s curator’s corner.
Weekly Gallery Tour: Joël Urruty
Joël Urruty is one of the featured artists in our exhibition Branching Out: Works in Wood from NC. Learn more about his background, featured works, and the woods they’re made from.
Throwback Thursday: “The Sculptor’s Voice”
This exhibition goes back five years ago! "The Sculptor's Voice" was guest curated by our friend and local sculptor, Bill Brown Jr. Did you get a chance to see it? Bill invited several artists from across the southeast to participate in this exhibition who explore sculpture in different ways.
Curator’s Corner: "Terra Ludis: Play Ground"
Terra Ludis: Play Ground launched on our website on Saturday, April 25th and we couldn’t be more stoked to share it with you. It features first hand accounts of High Country outdoor recreation through a series of oral history interviews along with some epic adventure photographs, many of which were captured by photographer Daniel Gajda.
Weekly Gallery Tour: Coffee with the Curator
Good morning! Grab a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever you'd like, and please join us for this video feature of Coffee with the Curator, where our Curator, Dianna Cameron, takes us on a virtual tour highlighting a few of the works and artists in our current exhibition, "Branching Out: Works in Wood from North Carolina." Today, we're featuring artists Aspen Golann, Bob Trotman, Derrick Beasley, and Roger Atkins. We hope you enjoy!
Throwback Thursday: “Romantic Spirits”
Today's Throwback Thursday is a shout out to our friends at The Johnson Collection with their traveling exhibition "Romantic Spirits: Nineteenth Century Paintings of the South from the Johnson Collection," that came to our museum back in 2015! "Romantic Spirits" chronicled the cultural evolution and concepts of the romantic movement as it unfolded in fine art of the American South.
Curator’s Corner: Marjorie & Louis
We are excited to bring you new exhibitions this summer, including Marjorie & Louis." We'll keep you posted on the opening date of this exhibition, but we plan to have it up when we can open our doors to the public again! Marjorie & Louis" tells the story of an unlikely, yet loving marriage between two artists who spent many years together in the community of Blowing Rock, NC. The name Marjorie Daingerfield may stand out to some who are familiar with her father, Elliott Daingerfield, a well renowned early 20th century American painter. Like her father, Marjorie grew to become a professional artist, but rather than picking up a paintbrush, she became a sculptor, with bronze as her primary medium. She would spend many memorable summers in Blowing Rock alongside her second husband, Louis Lundean.
Lil' Docent Tour: "Branching Out" with Aiden
Join lil' docent, Aiden Smith, for this raw and unedited tour of Branching Out: Works in Wood from NC. (This tour was filmed during the installation process of the exhibition, so you’ll notice a few things out of place.) We wish you could tour this breathtaking exhibition in person as we're sure you would be as impressed and delighted as this six-year old! We remain hopeful you'll get a chance to come visit soon once it's safe to gather again.
Throwback Thursday: “The Art of Native Plants”
"The Art of Native Plants" was a group exhibition juried by artist Lynn Duryea, who before retiring, taught ceramics for many years in the Art Department at Appalachian State University in Boone. We had a lot of great submissions from artists around the state, all of whom made work featuring native plants that grow here in North Carolina at all times of the year. It was a bright, fun exhibition that featured artwork created using a diverse selection of mediums, including painting, printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, wood, fibers, metals, and photography.
Curator’s Corner: Walter Launt Palmer
Spring is here! To honor and say goodbye to winter, today we’ll feature a work from our permanent collection. American Impressionist Walter Launt Palmer is most famous for his snow scenes, so much so that he has been referred to as "the painter of the American winter." Impressionists like Palmer were obsessed with capturing changes in light outdoors and how this altered our perception of (and even relationship to) the landscape. However, instead of risking frost and frozen limb to paint outside in the snow all day, Palmer used photographs he took to study the effects of natural light and then painted his scenes from memory.
Weekly Gallery Tour: Zak Weinberg
Zak Weinberg (b. 1993) is a multi-disciplinary sculptor and fabricator. Through the alter-ego, Grebniew Kaz (his name spelled backwards), a relationship has been forged with a laser cutter, creating and exhibiting machine fabricated wood relief sculptures. Each piece is an expression of universal language to celebrate the harmonious balance of difference.
Program Watch Party: Live 'n Pickin' with the Capozzoli Guitar Company
In our exhibit, "Sound Machines: Stringed Instruments of the Capozzoli Guitar Company" we have the rare opportunity to showcase pieces that are both works of art and instruments for creating art. In this program Chris Capozzoli will tell us about a few of his instruments and his friend Jeff Moretz will demonstrate the instruments in action.
Throwback Thursday: Elizabeth Bradford: Time + Terrain
Four years ago, we were honored to be able to collaborate with Davidson, NC based artist Elizabeth Bradford and guest curator Carla Hanzal to bring Elizabeth Bradford: Time + Terrain to our museum. Did you get to see Elizabeth's beautiful work in this exhibition?
Curator’s Corner: Elliot Daingerfield
Feeling a little rough these days? Taking time to reflect and connect with the arts can help when you're feeling low. For Curator's Corner today, we thought we'd take some time to reflect on the life of one of our museums' favorites... Elliott Daingerfield (1859-1932). He was a successful artist, but his life was without hardship.