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The Ackland Art Museum at UNC-Chapel Hill is set to get a $70 million revamp that will more than double the footprint of the museum.
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The university hopes the expansion and partial renovation will create an “arts district” on campus.
“The goal really is to revitalize and enhance the arts on campus more broadly and create a new front door to campus,” said Nate Knuffman, UNC’s chief financial officer, at a Board of Trustees meeting Wednesday. “It’s really about reprogramming that part of campus.”
On Thursday, the university’s Board of Trustees voted to authorize $1.5 million in advance planning funds for the project as part of its consent agenda, or a slate of items voted on together without further discussion. Ackland already has that $1.5 million in hand, Knuffman said.
The authorization will allow the university to begin the process of selecting a designer for the project.
Chancellor Lee Roberts told reporters on Thursday that the expansion of the Ackland is more than “just a new building.” He said it’s part of a “significant commitment to elevating the importance of the arts at Carolina.”
“We intend with the expansion of the Ackland to build an arts district there in that [Porthole Alley] corridor, and we have also really tried to upgrade and expand the role of the arts within the university structure,” Roberts said.
The renovation will unify the existing museum and the planned expansion. Improvements to landscaping, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, emergency power, and fire protection are also part of the project.
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The undertaking will be funded entirely by philanthropic gifts, according to Knuffman. Donors are excited about the new leadership at the museum, he said, and UNC has already secured “a substantial level of commitments.” Museum director Shalini Le Gall came to Carolina from the Portland Museum of Art in Maine last year.
Knuffman called the funding plan “more certain” than a similar project proposed several years ago — a museum renovation and expansion that never materialized.
“This project and request is significantly different,” Knuffman said. “The previously contemplated project exceeded $100 million in total cost. It involved an uncertain funding plan that included a request for state funds, and it intended a much larger footprint.
“This project is smaller in scale and scope. It will be funded from 100% philanthropy. [It] will require no state appropriations for permanent university resources.”
Le Gall told The News & Observer that the museum is in the very early stages of planning what the expansion could look like, without much ironed out yet.
“We are fundamentally thinking about the museum as this interdisciplinary space where all of [UNC’s] departments and fields and specialties meet and mingle and explore and experiment,” Le Gall said. “The ways in which the arts can be a space for bridge building across disciplines — but also in-depth exploration within a discipline — is just extraordinary. And we’re at the cusp of that. We’ll only see that grow and develop in the coming years.”
The grant funding associated with the project must be spent by 2027.
The Ackland Art Museum is open to public Wednesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. This month, the museum launched two new exhibitions: “Care and Concern: Recent Acquisitions of Modern and Contemporary Art” and “Continental Shift: Recent Acquisitions of African Art.”
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The top candidate for design firm will be presented to the board for approval.
This story was originally published July 29, 2026 at 10:29 AM.