Current Exhibitions

July 2, 2026 to February 27, 2027

Community Stories: Sustaining North Carolinas Black Heritage presents a series of vignettes exploring spaces of dignity, belonging, safety, and imagination within Black communities across North Carolina. Featuring historical photographs, contemporary images, artworks from the Gregg Museum of Art & Design 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.

March 26-September 26, 2026

Stories Told by Breath celebrates the creativity, memory, and cultural continuity of Native American artists connected to North Carolina. 

The exhibition brings together a rich range of media—clay, beadwork, textiles, printmaking, regalia, sculpture, and multimedia—woven with storytelling to form a vibrant experience of artistic practice in North Carolina.

Artists include Senora Lynch (Haliwa-Saponi), Karina McMillan (Lumbee), Harlen Chavis (Lumbee), Aaron Baumgardner (Catawba),Coda Cavalier (Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation), Amy Postoak (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians)& Johnny Postoak (Muscogee Creek)of Three Sisters Designs, Rhiannon “Skye” Tafoya (Eastern Band of Cherokee & Santa Clara Pueblo), Joshua Adams (Eastern Band of Cherokee), Idalis Dial (Coharie), Tim Locklear (Lumbee), NC State students Ashtyn Thomas (Lumbee) and Victoria Wilson (Haliwa-Saponi), Gwen Locklear (Lumbee) and Alexandra Williams portrait photographs of Powwows at Dix Park. Together, these artists explore heritage, craft, and storytelling as a living continuum of creativity, connecting ancestral knowledge with contemporary expression.

March 26-September 26, 2026

Nationally recognized artist Bobby C. Martin (Muscogee Creek) presents a solo exhibition tracing the pathways connecting ancestral Mvskoke homelands to Indian Territory. Drawing from family photographs and archival materials, Martin weaves encaustic, collage, maps, hymns, and personal imagery to reframe histories of forced removal as stories of resilience, survival, and continuity—inviting viewers to reflect on their own family histories and the enduring presence of Mvskoke people.

Upcoming Exhibitions

August 6, 2026 – January 15, 2027

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. 

Organized by Art Bridges Foundation. Curated by Tamir Williams, PhD, with support from Ibby Ouweleen, Curatorial Research Assistant, and Javier Rivero Ramos, PhD, Associate Curator.

October 28, 2026 – February 28, 2027

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.

October 29, 2026 – May 29, 2027

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 of Art & Design—a space shaped by the architectural influence of her father and NC State College of Design alum, Phil Freelon. Rooted in North Carolina and shaped by Freelon’s personal and collective memory, ancestry, and humanity, Grounded contrasts dueling dimensions of fragility and strength, transforming the Gregg Museum into a retrospective on well-being, connection, and discovery.

All exhibitions are accessible, and admission is always free. Large-print gallery guides for visitors with low vision and other accommodations can be provided on request.