The Gregg Museum of Art & Design at North Carolina State University announces a powerful collection of four exhibitions and related programming that reflect on wellness for all, Black Southern heritage, and community togetherness. Anchored by 2026 Artist-in-Residence Maya Freelon’s immersive exhibition Grounded, on view October 29, 2026 through May 29, 2027, the season represents a new chapter for the Gregg Museum’s relaunched Artist-in-Residence program—one that places artists at the center of research, storytelling, teaching, and community engagement.

Grounded features new site-specific installations in dialogue with more than 20 works including photography, paintings, and vibrant, larger-than-life layered tissue paper sculptures spanning
two decades of Freelon’s career. Freelon invites visitors on a journey through the Gregg Museum—a space shaped by the architectural influence of her father Phil Freelon, NC State College of Design alumnus, designer of the Gregg Museum’s contemporary building, and principal architect for the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

“Looking both backward and forward through the lens of the Gregg Museum’s space revealed recurring themes of transformation, loss, and healing across my artistic practice. The juxtaposition of these new immersive environments alongside artwork by my father, architect Phil Freelon, and great-grandfather, a pioneer African American Impressionist painter during the Harlem Renaissance, bring new meaning to this retrospective collection of my career,” said Freelon, who was raised in Durham, NC and previously taught at the College of Design. “Serving as the Gregg Museum’s Artist-in-Residence has made this experience especially meaningful, creating opportunities to engage with students, faculty, and community members through shared creative exploration.”

The season, collectively called Grounded at the Gregg, also offers oral histories, scientific inquiry, and artworks from the Gregg Museum’s permanent collection, connecting themes of land and ancestry through historical and community perspectives and inviting audiences to explore what it means to be “grounded” with the past, present and future. By weaving together art with scholarship across disciplines, the Grounded at the Gregg season demonstrates how a university museum can uniquely foster these conversations.

“At NC State, we have the ability to bring together artists, scholars, and students in ways that spark new possibilities for understanding ourselves and the world around us,” said Director Sara Segerlin, who joined the Gregg Museum in 2024 from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and The Momentary. “By connecting community histories, contemporary artistic practice, and interdisciplinary inquiry, this season honors the stories that brought us here while creating space for new discoveries. We hope visitors leave with a deeper understanding of the people and places that shape our world.”

In addition to Freelon’s Grounded, season highlights include Crafting Sanctuaries: Black
Spaces of the Great Depression South organized by Art Bridges Foundation and curated by Tamir Williams, PhD, featuring rarely seen photographs of the private homes and communal spaces of Black Southerners in the 1930s and 40s; Community Stories: Sustaining North Carolina Black Heritage explores dignity, belonging, and imagination within North Carolina’s Black communities in collaboration with NC State Associate Professor Ajamu Dillahunt-Holloway, local partners, NC State students, and the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission; and Grounded companion exhibition You Are Here: Geolocating the Self through the Familiar in the Midst of the Unfamiliar by ariana Farquharson, Freelon’s former teaching assistant and College of Design faculty member at NC State, on view at NC State’s African American Cultural Center.

Featured Exhibitions
Community Stories: Sustaining North Carolina Black Heritage
July 2, 2026 – February 27, 2027
Gregg Museum’s Thomas E. Cabaniss Gallery at the Historic Residence

Community Stories: Sustaining North Carolina Black Heritage presents a series of vignettes exploring spaces of dignity, belonging, safety, and imagination within Black communities across North Carolina. Featuring historical photographs, images, artworks from the Gregg Museum collection, including a handmade guitar by Freeman Vines, and ephemera from community partners, the exhibition reflects on place, memory, creativity, and spiritual resilience across generations. Through stories of triumph and adversity, Community Stories honors the ways Black Americans have sustained and uplifted their communities through family, entrepreneurship, cultural expression, and soulful imagination, while inspiring future generations.

Crafting Sanctuaries: Black Spaces of the Great Depression South
August 6, 2026 – January 16, 2027
Gregg Museum’s Robert Keith Black and J. Ormond Sanderson, Jr. Gallery

Crafting Sanctuaries: Black Spaces of the Great Depression South expands the popular visual memory of the Great Depression by highlighting rarely seen Farm Security Administration (FSA) images of rural Black Southerners and their spatial worlds. Spanning the work of seven FSA photographers and six Southern states, the photographs in this exhibition reveal how Depression-era Black Southerners shaped their domestic and communal spaces into sanctuaries—sites of expression, comfort, and refuge—during a period of unprecedented economic turmoil and racial violence in the country. Inspired by Crafting Sanctuaries, the Gregg Museum additionally features connections within its permanent collection that illuminate North Carolina stories.

Crafting Sanctuaries is organized by the Art Bridges Foundation, and curated by Tamir Williams, PhD, with support from Ibby Ouweleen, Art Bridges Curatorial Research Assistant and Javier Rivero Ramos, PhD, Art Bridges Associate Curator.

You Are Here: Geolocating the Self through the Familiar in the Midst of the Unfamiliar
October 28, 2026 – February 28, 2027
Presented at the NC State African American Cultural Center  

Digital humanist and creative storyteller ariana Farquharson debuts the satellite exhibition, You Are Here: Geolocating the Self Through the Familiar in the Midst of the Unfamiliar, at NC State University’s African American Cultural Center Gallery. Created in conversation with Gregg Museum of Art & Design and Maya Freelon’s immersive installation Grounded, the exhibition features 2D prints, 3D prints, and animations of AI-generated abstract forms called “diasporic wayfields.” Through ancestral notions of inherited and inhabited fluidity and critical collective reflection, You Are Here invites visitors to locate self and home. In doing so, ariana expands Freelon’s exploration of her own origins.

Grounded
October 29, 2026 – May 29, 2027
Gregg Museum’s J. Norwood and Valeria C. Adams Gallery and Randy and Susan Woodson Gallery

Through new site-specific installations in dialogue with works spanning two decades of her artistic journey, Artist-in-Residence Maya Freelon invites visitors on an immersive journey through Grounded at the Gregg Museum—a space shaped by the architectural influence of her father, Phil Freelon, an NC State College of Design alum and principal architect for the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Grounded, which spotlights Freelon’s signature use of vibrant color and layered tissue paper inspired by her maternal grandmother, debuts an art experience shaped by heritage and legacy that contrasts dueling dimensions of fragility and strength through material and memory. Works created across different phases of Freelon’s career, alongside artwork by her father and great-grandfather, Allan Freelon, Sr., a pioneer African American Impressionist painter active during the Harlem Renaissance, reveal recurring themes of loss, healing, transformation, and interconnectedness.

Blurring the line between personal history and collective experience, Grounded pushes beyond a traditional retrospective by offering an evolving meditation on what it means to remain connected—to self, to family, to community, to earth, and to the histories that shape us—and transforms the Gregg into a sanctuary for well-being, reflection, and discovery.

Related Events
Reflections on Crafting Sanctuaries
Tuesday, August 25, 2026, 5:30-7 p.m.
Gregg Museum of Art & Design
Free, registration required

Crafting Sanctuaries: Black Spaces of the Great Depression South curator Dr. Tamir Williams highlights rarely seen Farm Security Administration (FSA) images of rural Black Southerners and their spatial worlds during the 1930s and 1940s, followed by a panel discussion featuring NC State faculty members Dr. Ajamu Dillahunt-Holloway, Assistant Professor of African American History and Public History at NC State University; Dr. Nishani Frazier, Professor of History and Director of Public History at North Carolina State University; and North Carolina Poet Laureate Dr. Jaki Shelton Green.

Intergenerational Story Circle Series with Johnny Lee Chapman III
Wednesday, September 16, 2026, 6:30-8 p.m.
Gregg Museum of Art & Design
Free, registration required

Led by community historian and cultural organizer Johnny Lee Chapman III, this series of intergenerational Story Circles explore how Black communities in Raleigh built networks of mutual support and sanctuary. Centered on the voices of Black leaders and elders in Raleigh, these gatherings are designed to connect deeply with young adults—the next generation of leaders.

Talk and Tour with Khadija McNair, NC Freedom Park Manager, exploring Liberty, Resilience, and Inspiration
Thursday, October 1, 2026, 3-4:30 p.m.
Gregg Museum of Art & Design
Free, registration required

North Carolina Freedom Park Manager Khadija McNair, M.A. offers an insider’s look at how art and public spaces intersect to honor the enduring journey toward freedom. Followed by a Q&A and guided exhibition tour of Community Stories: Sustaining North Carolina Black Heritage.

Freeman Vines Film and Talk
Thursday, October 22, 2026, 5:30-7 p.m.
Gregg Museum of Art & Design
Free

Screening and discussion of Freeman Vines, a documentary about North Carolina artist and guitar maker Freeman Vines, whose select work uses wood from a tree associated with the 1930 lynching of Oliver Moore in eastern North Carolina. Following the film, Vines’ sister, Alice Vines, an esteemed pastor and vocalist with the celebrated gospel ensemble The Glorifying Vines Sisters, and Dr. Nishani Frazier, Professor of History and Director of Public History at North Carolina State University, explore the history behind the guitars and discuss how museums and cultural institutions care for objects connected to traumatic histories.

Guided Tour and Meditation with Maya Freelon
Thursday, October 29, 2026, 3-4 p.m.
Gregg Museum of Art & Design
Free

Join artist Maya Freelon for an immersive gallery tour of Grounded, exploring the evolution of
her work, creative practice, and the Freelon lineage and legacy. Through conversation, “slow looking”, gentle movement, awareness, and discovery, participants will engage with the textures, colors, materials, and memories embedded in Freelon’s work.

Opening Celebration of Grounded by Maya Freelon
Saturday, November 7, 2026, 1-5 p.m.
Gregg Museum of Art & Design
Free

Take part in a fun-filled afternoon to celebrate the opening of special exhibition Grounded by Maya Freelon. The community celebration will include local organizations highlighting African
American heritage and wellness, along with special performances by Tre. Charles, Johnny Lee Chapman III, and NC State’s Panoramic Dance Project.

An Evening with ariana Farquharson
Wednesday, November 11, 2026, 6-7:30 p.m.
NC State African American Cultural Center
Free, learn more

An intimate artist talk by ariana Farquharson, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the personal narratives and techniques that shaped the exhibition You Are Here: Geolocating the
Self through the Familiar in the Midst of the Unfamiliar.

NC State LIVE Well-Being Concerts with Nnenna and Pierce Freelon
Saturday, December 5, 2026, 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Gregg Museum of Art & Design
Tickets on sale Thursday, November 5, at 10 a.m. online and 1 p.m. in the box office

NC State LIVE and the Gregg Museum present Well-Being Concerts locally in partnership
with Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, featuring a family with rich connections to the university and the museum. The late architect Phil Freelon, an NC State College of Design alumnus, led the team that designed the Gregg Museum’s new home that opened in 2017. Phil’s widow and son, Nnenna and Pierce Freelon, are a Grammy-nominated mother-son musical duo known for their collaborative children’s album, AnceStars. They will perform alongside Grounded, an exhibition created by the Gregg Museum Artist-in-Residence Maya Freelon, Phil and Nnenna’s daughter.

Additional Information and Hours
The Gregg Museum of Art & Design is located at 1903 Hillsborough Street in Raleigh and is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Admission to the museum is free. Learn more at gregg.arts.ncsu.edu.

Exhibition Support
Generous support for this project provided by Art Bridges Foundation. The Gregg Museum also thanks its community partners, the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission, and NC State’s African American Cultural Center.

###
 
About the Gregg Museum of Art & Design
The Gregg Museum of Art & Design serves as a site for North Carolina State University’s art, storytelling, and interdisciplinary exploration. Located in the historic Chancellor’s Residence on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh, NC, the Gregg Museum is a catalyst for collaboration and creativity, welcoming students, faculty, and visitors to engage with art, science, design, and wellness through exhibitions, collections, and learning programs.

Rooted in NC State’s Think and Do spirit, the Gregg Museum functions as both a dynamic gathering place and a living laboratory, fostering hands-on learning, arts-integrated research, and meaningful community connections. Through its exhibitions, educational initiatives, and renowned collection of approximately 54,000 works of art, craft, and design, the Gregg Museum inspires curiosity, encourages innovation, and demonstrates the transformative role of the arts in shaping a more connected and creative world.

The Gregg Museum is housed in the university’s historic Chancellor’s Residence, a 1927 Georgian mansion designed by architect Hobart Upjohn and renovated for its reopening as a museum in 2017 by the Freelon Group, led by alumnus Phil Freelon. Together with a 15,000-square-foot addition, the facility provides expanded space for exhibitions, programs, and community engagement while preserving an important piece of NC State history.