RALEIGH.- The North Carolina Museum of Art announces its fall 2024 season, offering two headline exhibitions as one ticket, Venice and the Ottoman Empire and Samurai: The Making of a Warrior. Together, these two shows offer visitors the opportunity to view works of art spanning more than 500 years across three global empires—Venetian, Ottoman, and Japanese. Both exhibitions will offer themed programming, workshops, lectures, and tours.

Museum director Valerie Hillings states, “We are pleased to offer visitors the opportunity to explore art history across three compelling time periods and cultures this fall. Our hope is to transport people to another time and place, providing multiple ways to experience the incredible artists, works of art, and histories featured in both ticketed shows. We think you’ll find there is a little something for everyone this season.”

Additionally, two free contemporary art exhibitions will be on view, Forever and Never: Photographs by Dan Estabrook and JP Jermaine Powell—Leadership Reimagined: Share Your Journey. Estabrook’s photos examine history and memory in contemporary images, while Powell’s show is the culmination of his two-year artist residency with the Museum. This exhibition season will also feature a series of free interactive art activities developed by the Museum, highlighting works of art from each show and offering engaging scavenger hunts and collaborative card-based explorations.

Venice and the Ottoman Empire

September 28, 2024–January 5, 2025

This ambitious cross-cultural exhibition explores the relationship between two interconnected European empires over four centuries: the Republic of Venice and Ottoman Empire (1400–1800). Through 190 works representing diverse media, Venice and the Ottoman Empire documents interactions between the two rival Mediterranean states across multiple arenas—political, diplomatic, economic, artistic, technological, and culinary. The exhibition includes paintings by Vittore Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini as well as an array of Venetian and Ottoman textiles, ceramics, metalwork, glassware, armor, printed books, woodcuts, and leather wares. More than half of the exhibition works come from one of seven Venetian museums: Palazzo Ducale, Museo Correr, Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo, Museo Fortuny, Museo del Vetro, Ca’ Rezzonico, and Gallerie dell’Accademia. Related works from the NCMA, Ackland Art Museum, and Gregg Museum of Art & Design broaden the visual representation of the cultures under examination.

Samurai: The Making of a Warrior
October 19, 2024–February 2, 2025

Samurai: The Making of a Warrior invites visitors to consider the original purpose of the material culture of war and see its connections to history, art, culture, and politics, offering a more nuanced view of samurai life and history. The exhibition features samurai arms and armor from an exceptional private collection in Greensboro, NC, displayed alongside a selection of visually compelling objects of material culture on loan from a private collection of Buddhist books, the Ackland Art Museum, Nasher Museum, Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Rubenstein Library, and Harvard Museums/Sackler Museum.

Forever and Never: Photographs by Dan Estabrook
September 7, 2024–January 19, 2025

Free

This exhibition features works by artist Dan Estabrook, who uses 19th-century photographic printing processes and materials to examine history and memory in contemporary images. Adopting a familiar language of the passage of time, he utilizes elements that one identifies with something old and worn—stains, spills, tears, folds, fading, discoloration—to create the appearance of age. In an era in which we are constantly bombarded with images, where everyone is a photographer with the click of a smartphone, where images and facts are constantly manipulated and fabricated by artificial intelligence and digital technology, Estabrook creates photographs that are unique objects. Using antiquated photographic processes that rely on the artist’s hand, he questions photography’s ability to “tell the truth” from its very inception.

JP Jermaine Powell—Leadership Reimagined: Share Your Journey
October 19, 2024–March 9, 2025
Free

The capstone exhibition of North Carolina artist JP Jermaine Powell’s artist residency at the NCMA, JP Jermaine Powell—Leadership Reimagined: Share Your Journey draws inspiration from the People’s Collection and highlights the Museum’s commitment to fostering the arts community and arts education in North Carolina and beyond. This series of contemporary portraits features state and national arts leaders, inviting viewers to see themselves as part of a shared art history and future. According to Powell, “I chose what some might consider unconventional leaders—individuals I hope will inspire others to lead. I hope these selections encourage you to see yourself as part of a collective history, one being shaped by the leader within each of us. This exhibition honors their dedication to making the NCMA and the local art scene vibrant and productive.”