The Ackland Art Museum is exploring options for its first major upgrades in decades, with aspirations to significantly expand its footprint and create an arts-focused district along the western edge of UNC campus.
The museum — which operates as part of the university — is planning a $70 million capital project to expand and renovate its spot at 101 South Columbia Street in downtown Chapel Hill. On Wednesday, the UNC Board of Trustees’ Budget, Finance and Infrastructure Committee approved of the museum’s request for advance planning spending authority, using $1.5 million of existing grant funding to conduct a study to capture the project’s scope before issuing a request for designers. The full board will take a vote Thursday morning on the measure, which is expected to pass.
The preparations for the capital project comes after the board gave the Ackland Art Museum similar spending authority a few years ago to explore expansion. UNC Chief Financial Officer Nate Knuffman told the Board of Trustees on Wednesday that the previous iteration ended up being a combination of too expensive and too reliant on outside funding models.
“This project is smaller in scale and scope,” Knuffman said. “It will be funded from 100% philanthropy. [It] will require no state appropriations or permanent university resources. The funding plan is more certain, we already have a substantial level of commitments.
“Also a difference [from before],” he added, “we also have new campus and arts museum leadership, and that’s really excited the donor base to support the new project.”
The Ackland Art Museum hired Shalini Le Gall as its latest executive director last year after the previous permanent director, Katie Ziglar, left in 2024. Coming to Chapel Hill after leading the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, Le Gall was tasked with “leading the Ackland’s proposed expansion and increasing reach and engagement with the arts” in the university’s June announcement of her selection. Materials provided to the Board of Trustees said expansion would add 40,000 more square feet to the current museum — which would be its the most significant update since renovating its gallery spaces in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The project comes as another organization in the university’s visual arts community, Carolina Performing Arts, plans to create more dynamic artistic engagement through its “All. Together. Now.” festival set to debut next February. The multi-day event will span UNC’s campus and the broader Chapel Hill community. And as discussed during Thursday’s meeting, the Ackland’s vision is to similarly attract and involve more people outside of the museum’s walls.
“The goal really is to revitalize and enhance the arts on campus more broadly and create a new front door to campus,” Knuffman said of the expansion project. “It’s really about reprogramming that part of campus and adding an arts district in that area.”
Additionally, the capital project aims to improve several aspects of the Ackland’s current building, including upgrades to its HVAC, plumbing, electrical, emergency power, fire protection and other environmental systems.
As a university resource, the Ackland provides free entry to all community members and is open Wednesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Its latest in rotating exhibitions opened earlier in July: “Continental Shift: Recent Acquisitions of African Art,” featuring metalwork, textiles, beadwork and ceramics from across the African continent, and “Care and Concern: Recent Acquisitions of Modern and Contemporary Art.”
Chapelboro has requested comment from museum leadership through UNC Media Relations, which has said the Ackland will refrain from comment until the board’s vote on Thursday formally approves the advance planning spending authority.
Editor’s Note: The Ackland Art Museum is an advertiser with the Chapel Hill Media Group. This article was written separately from its advertising agreement and is not sponsored.
Featured photo by Aaron Keck/Chapel Hill Media Group.
Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
