Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University — Attraction in Durham

Beautiful architecture, clean facility, well-maintained and friendly supportive staff. However, the artwork is lacking. On the day that I went, The museum is comprised of 2 sections. One section was for classic art such as items from Peru from 2000 years ago. Interesting stuff. The other section is for modern art, which I'm usually a big fan of. Instead, it was almost entirely comprised of race-baiting displays and strange messaging that really had to stretch to convince me I should continue reading. There was literally a piece that used rifles where the artist claimed the gun shop owners were in fear that his art project would render those firearms useless. I work in that industry and no one is in fear of that kind of thing. There were many other claims by the other artists concerning race-related culture and history that seemed completely exaggerated compared to reality. If this was an independent museum I wouldn't care, but this museum belongs to Duke University, an educational institution with a reputation for high standards. To see this type of messaging being supported by Duke University has me questioning where their priorities are and if there is any oversight for the museum's curators. In the future I would much prefer to see artwork that attempts to unify us, to reveal and bring out our similarities, that tries to teach us realities of the world and its history, art that is capable of taking a complex idea and distilling it into something more...

Originally the Duke University of Art and located on the East Campus, the museum moved to this modern and updated facilities about 20 years back. The building is an art piece by itself, designed by Rafael Viñoly who designed the super tall and super skinny 432 Park Avenue, the curved Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas and the magnificent Fenchurch Street building in London.

The museum has three spaces include two galleries, a lecture hall and the large central courtyard. The permanent collection here is more than 10,000 pieces but it seemed like the rotating collection was maybe 200 and while I appreciate Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), I'd sure like to see more of their modern art. They had quite a few medieval and Roman/Greek era pieces. The second gallery was interesting with a political twist and contemporary pieces. Thought provoking.

Don't miss the Cafe here which was completely packed on this Saturday afternoon so there wasn't a free seat. And speaking of free, yes, the Nasher Museum is free to visit. The outside sculpture garden is also lovely but too cold to...

My wife and I went here on a rainy day during a little getaway in Durham. The traveling exhibit was about Pop art and it was OK. We thought it was interesting and presented well. My only problem was that the pieces that I found most interesting were those that didn't have a card explaining them, but that's just me.

The general collection is good, but it is pretty small. They have a good collection from the Americas. There are some interesting Roman pieces too. There is a really interesting photography exhibit from Hugh Mangum that we enjoyed. That's a recent addition to the general collection and it's worth seeing.

Why only 3 stars? As regular plebians (read: not Duke alumni) we had to pay $7/person to get in for what was barely an hour of looking around. I actually read every card on the wall and spent some time looking more seriously at a few pieces and we still barely spent an hour there. We also had to pay to park in the lot. I don't feel like it was a great value for what we saw and...