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1948
Local artists founded the museum in a three-room building in 1948
The museum was incorporated in 1948, founded by local artists. Its first home was a three-room building on Charlotte Street, once the land sales office of E.W. Grove, developer of the Grove Park Inn. By 1950 it had begun acquiring a permanent collection, which quickly outgrew the building.
Moving
It moved to a bank's 15th floor, a house and then the Civic Center
The museum moved to donated space on the 15th floor of the Northwestern Bank Building, now the Arras Building. It then bought the Gay Green House at 152 Pearson Drive in the Montford Area Historic District. In 1976 it opened a 9,000-square-foot facility in the Civic Center, and in 1984 it was accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
Pack Place
In 1992 it moved into a 1925 building that had been a library
In 1992 the museum opened in a 1925 Italian Renaissance style building with contemporary additions that once housed Pack Memorial Library. The space was 12,000 square feet. An expansion completed in 1999 added a new entrance, an art library, classrooms and a community gallery, and brought the museum to 24,400 square feet.
2019
The museum grew to 54,000 square feet and reopened on November 14, 2019
Between September 2016 and November 2019 the museum expanded into space formerly occupied by The Health Adventure, growing to 54,000 square feet. The permanent collection grew to more than 8,000 works. It reopened on November 14, 2019. The first public art installation in the plaza is a chiseled glass orb, Reflections on Unity, by Henry Richardson.
The collection
The permanent collection is 20th and 21st century American art
The museum builds its exhibitions on a permanent collection of 20th and 21st century American art. It also shows works of significance to Western North Carolina's cultural heritage, including studio craft, Black Mountain College and Cherokee artists. In June 2022 it was one of three museums to receive the National Medal for Museum and Library Service.
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The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Asheville Art Museum, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.