Exhibitions

This exhibition features over 50 works of art in a variety of media by more than 30 Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) and Cherokee Nation artists. The exhibition highlights the use of the written Cherokee language, a syllabary developed by Cherokee innovator Sequoyah.

Featuring a rare presentation of all nine prints from Robert Rauschenberg’s Ruminations portfolio, Judy Chicago’s Retrospective in a Box portfolio, and selections from the Museum’s Collection, this exhibition contends with the act of remembrance and reflection.

The experiment known as Black Mountain College (BMC) began in 1933 in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina. This exhibition highlights the Asheville Art Museum’s collection of design from BMC, like the rarely seen Gregory furniture, and situates it in the context of its influences and surroundings at BMC.

This exhibition, drawn from the Museum's Collection with additional select loans from regional collectors and institutions, explores works in a variety of media that speak to the vibrant abstract experiments in American art making during the middle of the 20th century.

This exhibition presents Graves’s eight prints alongside the portfolio frontispiece and a page of Cuperman’s text to immerse visitors in the collaborative dance of the tango.

Artist Walter B. Stephen contributed to Western North Carolina’s identity as a flourishing site for pottery production and craftsmanship in the early 20th century.

Allen & Barry Huffman have been collecting contemporary Southern folk art for the past 40 years. Within their collection are subsets of folk art including self-taught artists driven to share their messages, crafts for the tourist market, and southern pottery.

One of two inaugural exhibitions is Intersections in American Art, the major reinstallation and reinterpretation of the Museum’s Collection in a much-enlarged gallery space.

Art and artists often encourage us to consider our place in the world. Artworks in the Windgate Foundation Atrium and Museum Plaza bring many separate parts together to make a unified whole and offer a variety of possibilities for how to navigate our physical world on regional, national, and global levels.

POP-UP EXHIBITION: The making of pottery in North Carolina has a long history. Native American potters are known to have made pots from the start of the 16th century, and European colonizers of the 1700s arrived with knowledge of their local ceramic techniques.

POP-UP EXHIBITION: This exhibition collectively demonstrates innovations in the traditional art of basketry. The artists’ conceptual media vary between organically dyed reeds, stoneware ceramic, woven wire and even hand-made paper.

POP-UP EXHIBITION: Looking Through: Glass from the Asheville Art Museum considers glass as a medium of internal and external contemplation. These transparent glass works evoke a sense of inner worlds made visible.

Stained with Glass features imagery that recreates the sensation and colors of stained glass. The exhibition showcases Harvey K. Littleton and the range of makers who worked with him, including Dale Chihuly, Cynthia Bringle, Thermon Statom, and more.

A Hand in Studio Craft highlights recent gifts to the Museum’s Collection and loans from the family of glass artist Harvey K. Littleton. This exhibition places Harvey and Bess Littleton’s collection into the context of their lives, as they moved around the United States, connected with other artists, and developed their own work.

The Asheville Art Museum is a regional affiliate partner of the annual Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, sponsoring an annual juried competition for students in grades 7–12 from all across WNC.

The Wyeths: Three Generations provides a comprehensive survey of works by N. C. Wyeth, one of America’s finest illustrators; his son, Andrew, an important realist painter; his eldest daughter, Henriette, a realist painter; and Andrew’s son Jamie, a popular portraitist.

William Waldo Dodge contributed to American Arts and Crafts silver’s relevancy persisting almost halfway into the 20th century. The aesthetics of the style were dictated by its philosophy: an artist’s handmade creation should reflect their hard work and skill, and the resulting artwork should highlight the material from which it was made.

American Perspectives: Stories from the American Folk Art Museum Collection showcases over 80 stellar works of folk and self-taught art. Beautiful, diverse, and truthful; the art illuminates the thoughts and experiences of individuals with an immediacy that is palpable and unique to these expressions.

Presented in English and Spanish, Border Cantos | Sonic Border offers perspective on the challenges of migration, inviting us to bridge boundaries. When experienced as a whole, the images, instruments, and emanating sounds create an immersive space in which to look, listen, and learn about the complicated issues surrounding the Mexican-American border.

This exhibition showcases a selection of collaborative creative works that emerged from nearly four decades of the Mountain Lake Workshop series, a program sited in rural southwestern Virginia.

Golden Hour: Olympians Photographed by Walter Iooss Jr. highlights dozens of photographer Walter Iooss Jr.’s images from the Museum’s Collection.

Precious Medals: Gold, Silver, Bronze highlights works from the Museum’s Collection including glass, ceramic, fashion, and sculpture that use the same metals that are given to the top three placing athletes in an Olympic competition.

Artistic Tribute: Representation of the Athlete pays homage to the historic Olympic tradition of including the arts as a competition.

Public Domain: Photography and the Preservation of Public Lands presents works drawn from the Asheville Art Museum’s Collection by artists looking both regionally and nationally at lands that are either state or federally managed or have become so.

This exhibition surveys the life’s work of Lewis Wickes Hine (1874–1940), the father of American documentary photography.

As an American art museum, the exhibition calls attention to the fact that we have decided to collect those artists who came to this country—either at their own prompting or out of necessity. As they adopted America as their new home, we have, in turn, embraced them, their creative output, and their artwork.

Featuring more than 40 works, Beauford Delaney’s Metamorphosis into Freedom examines the career evolution of modern painter Beauford Delaney within the context of his 38-year friendship with writer James Baldwin.

The Asheville Art Museum is a regional affiliate partner of the annual Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, sponsoring an annual juried competition for students in grades 7–12 from all across WNC.

Ralph Burns has long been recognized as a documentary photographer whose images have captured the diverse and enigmatic nature of ritual and religion, and who has explored the subjective and often defining nature of belief, worship, and culture.

Sallie Middleton has long been considered one of the most gifted painters of plants and animals. She possessed a remarkable eye for detail, a skilled hand to record what she saw and a keen imagination to shape her enchanted images.