Mission
The Fine Art Museum serves as a cultural catalyst to celebrate and preserve the artistic legacy of the western North Carolina region with a developing focus to collect, interpret and showcase innovation in contemporary art of high artistic merit.
The Museum will present a full spectrum of creativity to reveal the underlying parallels and differences among wide-ranging forms of human expression in the visual and performing arts. In an increasingly complex global culture, the Museum serves the campus and community as:
- a learning laboratory stressing exploration while challenging contemporary artists from throughout the region and nation to create new art forms utilizing not only conventional tools and processes but also new modes of expression and state of the art technology.
- a teaching museum by facilitating scholarly research, interactive art education, academic curriculum support, enrichment and life-long learning for children and adults of all ages and backgrounds while featuring the creativity and innovation of cross-cultural and interdisciplinary collaboration.
- a focal point for encouraging dialogue toward greater understanding of contemporary art in its diverse forms and processes in the context of its communication capacity and bridge potential inspired from local mountain traditions to a myriad of cross-cultural historical references.
read about the Fine Art Museum's history