Mint Museum. The Mint Museum is a cultural institution in Charlotte, North Carolina that comprises Mint Museum Randolph and Mint Museum Uptown. Together these two locations have hundreds of collections showcasing art and design from around the globe. In 2018, The Mint Museum announced Todd A. Herman, PhD, former Executive Director at The Arkansas Arts Center, as the new President and CEO. Bruce LaRowe, former Executive Director of Children's Theatre of Charlotte, was the Interim CEO in June 21, 2017. He assumed the role after the departure of Dr. Kathleen V. Jameson's Presidency in 2017. Mint Museum Randolph resides in a federal style building that once housed the Charlotte Mint. Opening in 1936, it was the first art museum in North Carolina, USA. The permanent collections include American Art, Ancient American Art, American and European ceramics, American and European Decorative Art, North Carolina Pottery, historic costume and fashionable dress and accessories, African Art, Asian Art, historic maps, Contemporary art, and photography. The companion Mint Museum of Craft + Design focuses on contemporary craft. The Mint Museum is the largest visual arts institution in Charlotte and holds the largest public collection of Charlotte-born artist Romare Bearden's work. The American Art collection comprises approximately 900 works created between the late 1700s and circa 1945. It includes portraiture of the Federal era, 19th century landscapes, and paintings from the group known as The Eight. Additional highlights in this area include works by John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Sully, and Hudson River School painters Thomas Cole and Sanford Gifford. The Art of the Ancient Americas collection includes roughly 2,000 objects from more than 40 cultures, spanning more than 4,500 years. The collection includes body adornments, tools, ceramic vessels, sculpture, textiles, and metal ornaments. There are about 2,230 objects in the Mint's collection of Contemporary Art. These include the Bearden collection and other works on paper, contemporary sculpture, and photography from circa 1945 to the present. The Mint's Decorative Arts collection, considered one of the finest in the country, centers on its holdings in ceramics. Containing more than 12,000 objects from 2000 B.C. to 1950 A.D., the collection includes a wide variety of ancient Chinese ceramics, 18th century European and English wares, American art pottery, and North Carolina pottery. The Mint has the largest and most comprehensive collection of North Carolina pottery in the nation. Its collection of North Carolina pottery comprises some 2,200 objects, dating from the 1700s. The museum's Delhom collection, given to the Mint in 1966, contains 2,000 pieces of historic pottery and porcelain, as well as pre-Columbian pieces that are more than 4,500 years old. Almost 10,000 items of men's, women's, and children's fashions from the early 18th century to present-day haute couture are included in the museum's collection of Historic Costume and Fashionable Dress, which approaches fashion as an art form. The Mint Museum of Craft + Design honors the legacy of the Charlotte region's rich craft heritage by collecting artistic craft in glass, metal, fiber, wood, mixed-media, and clay, including jewelry and furniture. With over 2,500 works, its permanent collections present the creative evolution of studio craft from the utilitarian objects of the 19th century to the art of today. It also encourages the creation of art, spawns collaborations and dialogue, and serves as a forum for artists, craft theory, aesthetics and technology. The Mint Museum of Craft + Design has been proclaimed as one of the foremost craft museums in the nation. It opened in 1999 following an $8.2 million donation to the Mint Museum of Art for purchase of a separate space to house the museum's craft and design collection in Charlotte's Uptown. Its permanent collection has been described as complex and eclectic, featuring everything from fine jewelry to fiber arts, from wacky, satirical, narrative ceramic sculpture.to product design. The museum closed in February 2010 to begin a move from its building on North Tryon Street to its new home in the Mint Museum Uptown at Levine Center for the Arts. It reopened as part of the Mint Museum Uptown in October 2010. The move expanded the collection's gallery space from 10,000 square feet to 18,000 square feet in the new facility. With the help of grants and the Arts & Science Council the Mint Museum's new 145,000-square-foot location opened on October 1, 2010. Designed by Machado and Silvetti Associates of Boston, the building's estimated cost is $57 million.
more...