By LEE McFADDEN
Ackland Art Museum

CHAPEL HILL -- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Ackland Art Museum has secured a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in support of the museum's World Religions Project.

Ackland will use the one-year grant, which begins July 1, to produce several components of the project: a fall 1999 exhibition of photographs by Triangle children from diverse religious backgrounds, a fall 1999 storytelling series, a gallery guide to the museum's religious artworks and a series of workshops for Triangle teachers.

The museum's World Religions Project, begun in the 1996-97 academic year, uses art to teach about Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic and Jewish faith traditions. Images in the children's exhibition and perspectives on the experiences of North Carolina faith communities, shared in the storytelling series, will complement information about Ackland's collection.

“We expect the World Religions Project will become a national model for using art objects to support the teaching of world religions and related subjects such as world cultures, ethics and philosophy,” said Jerry Bolas, Ackland director.

The children's exhibition will feature photography by Triangle children of various faiths. Photographer Wendy Ewald, a MacArthur Fellow and research associate at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies, will serve as Ackland's guest curator for the exhibition. Ewald will identify children's groups among the different faiths, teach them about photography and compile the exhibition using resulting prints.

The show is expected to appeal to people of diverse faith communities, school children, university students and faculty and the general audience of the museum.

The storytelling program will feature local people telling tales from their faith traditions. Award-winning storyteller Louise Kessel of Bynum will identify, schedule and provide guidelines for storytellers.

The color gallery guide, which the NEA grant will allow Ackland to design and print, will highlight and provide information about sacred objects in the Ackland collection. Visitors can use the guides to find these objects in the museum and understand how they relate to religious traditions.

The teachers' workshop, yet to be scheduled, will show teachers from across North Carolina how to use works of art as points of reference for teaching about the world's religions, as required by the state's social studies curriculum.

“We, and the teachers we have served, have found art to be a safe access point to these difficult conversations,” says Ray Williams, the museum's curator of education and World Religions Project director. “We plan to provide materials that teachers can use in the classroom and, with museum visits, to introduce fairly and effectively some of the world's major religions.”

Earlier this year, the museum won a $47,000 grant for the World Religions Project from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation in Winston-Salem to help create course materials for North Carolina schools. Currently, Ackland educators are developing an interactive, multimedia prototype for on-line versions of these materials as a part of the university's ongoing efforts to reach out to North Carolina's public schools.

Ackland Art Museum's mission is to educate and delight the people of North Carolina using original works of art. The museum houses a collection of more than 14,000 works of art spanning three millennia and four continents. The collection is particularly rich in prints, drawings and photographs; art from diverse faith traditions including Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam; North Carolina pottery and folk art; and works by Old Masters such as Rubens, Delacroix and Rodin.

The museum also shows six to ten temporary exhibits yearly that are drawn from the permanent collection or borrowed from other sources.

Ackland serves school children and university students through special tours and outreach programs. Last year, the museum served more than 6,000 school children in the Triangle and surrounding counties.

Ackland's galleries are open Wednesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The museum is located on South Columbia Street near the Franklin Street intersection. For additional information, call the museum at (919) 966-5736 (voice) or (919) 962-0837 (Telecommunications Device for the Deaf).

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News Services contact: Laura J. Toler
Ackland Art Museum contact: Lee McFadden, 966-5736