
Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, 2001 Campus Drive, Durham, is free for everyone every day that it’s open.
Museum hours will be Tuesday through Friday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Reservations are not required.
You might be interested in our list of museums in the Triangle with free admission (all the time or certain days.)
Read on for a list of upcoming events and for the current exhibitions.
Upcoming Events at Nasher Museum of Art

Radical Repair Workshop
June 11th, 2022, 12 to 4 p.m.
June 25th, 2022, 12 to 4 p.m.
Free
The Radical Repair Workshop is a traveling art experience by Julia Gartrell.
Housed in a vintage camper named Sonny, the Radical Repair Workshop encourages participants and viewers to consider their relationship to mending, sentimental objects, single-use items, and radical (potentially non-functional) modes of repair.
You will be able to step inside the camper to explore the gallery and studio, contribute your own items for mending, and explore repair techniques through demonstrations and samples.
Through workshops and visits around the region, the Radical Repair Workshop teaches concrete skills, such as sewing and darning, but also explores abstract notions of repair.
Gallery Talk: Beverly McIver
Sunday, June 12th, 2022
2 to 3 p.m.
Free
Join the Nasher Museum within Reckoning and Resilience: North Carolina Art Now for a talk by Beverly McIver, whose work is on view.
Outdoor film in the Sculpture Garden: Jackie Brown
Thursday, June 16th, 2022
9 to 11:30 p.m.
Free
Meet in the Nasher Museum Sculpture Garden for the film Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997, 154 minutes). Jackie Brown is adapted from the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch, in which a flight attendant conspires against federal agents and a ruthless arms dealer in order to walk away with both her freedom and $550,000. But by casting Pam Grier (of 70s blaxploitation fame) in the lead, director Quentin Tarantino foregrounds a story of Jackie outsmarting a system inherently rigged against “a 44-year-old black woman.” Grier and bail bondsman Robert Forster excel as wistful, world-weary characters who are a little too old for a life of crime. Samuel L. Jackson, Robert De Niro, and Bridget Fonda also contribute arresting performances to this laid-back caper film.
Co-sponsored by Cinematic Arts and Duke’s Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies.
Raindate: Thursday, June 23, 9 PM
Seating: Bring your own cushions and blankets to spread out on the Nasher Sculpture Garden lawn.
Food and drink: You may bring your own snacks and beverages, but please no glass bottles or containers.
Performance Art: Echoes: From Here by John Felix Arnold, Michelle Dorrance and Byron Tittle
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2022
1 p.m.
Free
1 PM Performance in the Great Hall
2 PM Artist conversation in the Lecture Hall
Join the Nasher for a multidisciplinary collaboration between visual artist John Felix Arnold, MacArthur fellow Michelle Dorrance and Byron Tittle of Dorrance Dance tap company. Commissioned by Duke Arts and co-presented by American Dance Festival and the Nasher Museum, Echoes: From Here is a 30-minute dance performance that will result in the creation of a new work of visual art: a 6-by-8-foot “stage” created by Arnold from reclaimed wood sourced from both the Triangle and New York City.
The dancers will explore the materiality, sound and presence of the wood in transforming the surface. Their movements will be captured in the piece through marks made by their taps, evoking and creating a conversation with the history of the tap dance form, situated between the North and the South. In this sense, the project also represents the geographies of its creators’ lives: Arnold and Dorrance are Triangle natives, and Tittle was raised in New York, where all three live and work. The piece will exist as a living document — a transformative moment and reflection on the intersections of art, dance, and the social and physical environments in which we live. This collaboration is part of Arnold’s ongoing Echoes project series.
Outdoor film in the Sculpture Garden: Summer of Soul
Thursday, June 30th, 2022
9 to 11 p.m.
Free
Join the Nasher outside in the Nasher Museum Sculpture Garden for the film Summer of Soul (Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, 2021, 118 minutes). In his acclaimed debut as a filmmaker, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson presents a powerful and transporting documentary—part music film, part historical record created around an epic event that celebrated Black history, culture and fashion. Over the course of six weeks in the summer of 1969, just one hundred miles south of Woodstock, The Harlem Cultural Festival was filmed in Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park). The footage was largely forgotten–until now. Summer of Soul shines a light on the importance of history to our spiritual well-being and stands as a testament to the healing power of music during times of unrest, both past and present. The feature includes concert performances by Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, The 5th Dimension and more. This film won the 2022 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and the 2022 Grammy Award for Best Music Film.
Co-sponsored by Cinematic Arts and Duke’s Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies.
Raindate: Thursday, July 7, 9 PM.
Seating: Bring your own cushions and blankets to spread out on the Nasher Sculpture Garden lawn.
Food and drink: You may bring your own snacks and beverages, but please no glass bottles or containers.
Gallery Talk: Charles Edward Williams
Thursday, July 7th, 2022
6 to 7 p.m.
Free
Join the Nasher within Reckoning and Resilience: North Carolina Art Now for a talk by Charles Edward Williams, whose work is on view.
Current Exhibitions at Nasher Museum

Reckoning and Resilience: North Carolina Art Now
January 13th, 2022, to July 10th, 2022
Reckoning and Resilience: North Carolina Art Now brings together 30 emerging and established artists working across the state. This group survey, featuring approximately 100 works, presents an expansive view of contemporary art in North Carolina both in terms of regional geography and artistic approaches.
Nasher Museum of Art
Helen Frankenthaler: Un Poco Más (A Little More)
February 12th to August 28th, 2022
Student co-curated exhibition.
Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) is most known for her bold, colorful abstract paintings. Raised in New York City, she was a trailblazer in Abstract Expressionism, an art movement initiated in the late 1940s that emphasized spontaneous, expressive, large-scale painting. Armed with commercial paints and housepainters’ brushes, Frankenthaler and her contemporaries rebelled against restrictive political and artistic norms by using techniques considered revolutionary for the time.
Nasher Museum of Art
Jean Charlot: Visions of Mexico, 1933
December 11th, 2021 to June 5th, 2022
From an early age, French-born artist Louis Henri Jean Charlot (1898–1979) was fascinated by the ancient Americas. Through his grandfather, a native of Mexico City, and great-uncle, a collector of Mexican art and manuscripts, Charlot received an early education in ancient Mayan and Aztec history and culture. After serving in World War I, Charlot moved with his mother from Paris to Mexico in 1921. Soon after their arrival, Charlot began assisting with archaeological expeditions, writing art criticism, making prints and paintings, and even apprenticing with Mexican muralist Diego Rivera (1886–1957)
Nasher Museum of Art
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