Family Day: Odita: A Wonderous Mural
2024-09-08 13:00 (America/New_York) | Nasher Museum of Art
Collaborate with the community and create a floor mural inspired by Odili Donald Odita's "Shadow and Light (for Julian Francis Abele)" prominently displayed in our Great Hall. Have fun with your friends and family building the mural on the floor of our Great Hall using basic shapes and colors!

Parking at the Nasher on Family Day Sundays is free of charge!

Chris Yon & Taryn Griggs
2024-09-12 18:00 - 19:00
"Dance, for our family, is a parenthesis for life experience. Periods of our lives that we spent working on choreography coincide with periods of major things happening in our lives and the world." - YOGGS FAMILY NEWSLETTER

American Dance Festival and the Nasher Museum co-present YOGGS FAMILY NEWSLETTER, 2014-present, an immersive experience where the audience is led through the Great Hall of the Nasher Museum by Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs alongside their daughter, Bea Yon. The audience is integrated into the trio as momentary chorus members to their family stories, dances and drawing games. While the dances look "abstract" or non-narrative, this collection addresses how the trio captures experiences, creates memories, and attaches significance to when and where they dance together and who they meet along the way as part of their family story.

IMAGE: Chris Yon & Taryn Griggs. Photo by Zoe Litaker

Chris Yon & Taryn Griggs
2024-09-12 18:00
Join ADF for an immersive professional dance performance!

YOGGS FAMILY NEWSLETTER, 2014-present, is an immersive experience where the audience is led through the lobby of the Nasher Museum of Art by Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs alongside their daughter, Bea Yon. The audience is integrated into the trio as momentary chorus members to our family stories, dances, and drawing games. "Dance, for our family, is a parenthesis for life experience. Periods of our lives that we spent working on choreography coincide with periods of major things happening in our lives and the world." While the dances look "abstract" or non-narrative, this collection addresses how the trio captures experiences, creates memories, and attaches significance to when and where we dance together and who we meet along the way as part of our family story.

Register now!

Photo Credit: Zoe Litaker

ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch – Film Screening
2024-09-26 18:00
6:00 PM Self-guided visit of "Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocene"

6:30 PM Welcome and introduction of the film by Bass Connections team, Climate Hope

6:35 - 8:05 PM Screening of ANTHROPOCENE (run time 1h 27m)

Join us for the screening of ANTHROPOCENE: A Human Epoch, award winning documentary created by Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky.

The third in a trilogy of films, ANTHROPOCENE is a mesmerizing exploration on humanity's ongoing reengineering of the planet. From concrete seawalls in China that now cover 60% of the mainland coast, to the biggest terrestrial machines ever built in Germany, the film portrays in stark relief the global and permanent changes human impact has had on the Earth. Narrated by Alicia Vikander. "At the intersection of art and science, ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch witnesses in an experiential and non-didactic sense a critical moment in geological history - bringing a provocative and unforgettable experience of our species' breadth and impact."

Art for the Next 100 Years
2024-09-27 13:00 - 14:00
Join a tour led by Duke alumni and students through several galleries to discuss works of art that will help usher in the next 100 years, in honor of Duke's centennial celebration. In this tour, we talk about the Nasher Museum's role now and in the future-through an inclusive, forward-thinking, contemporary collection and artistic program. Free, pre-registration required, limited capacity.

Special Exhibition Tour: Second Nature
2024-09-27 14:00 - 15:00
Join this tour led by a gallery guide of the new exhibition Second Nature: Photography in the Age of the Anthropocene. Learn more about this traveling exhibition organized by Chief Curator Marshall N. Price.

Free, pre-registration required, limited capacity. Registration link coming soon.

Public Reflections Tour
2024-10-08 14:30, 2024-11-12 14:00
On the second Tuesday of every month, join Reflections, a program for people with dementia and their care partners. These free tour programs are in-person and last 90 minutes. With themes that change month-to-month, we experience the art on view, do fun art-making activities, enjoy musical performances in the galleries, and have a great time together in small groups. Reflections tours are designed with memory loss in mind and are physically accessible

Free parking passes are available.

To register or ask a question email reflections@duke.edu

Beyond Bars: The Hidden Costs of the Criminal Legal System
2024-10-10 18:30
Join the Wilson Center for Science and Justice for a discussion of the wide-ranging impacts of the criminal legal system on individuals and communities. Members of our Duke Law community involved in criminal defense will be in conversation with artist Sherrill Roland, in conjunction with the exhibition, Processing Systems: Numbers by Sherrill Roland.

Panelists include the following:

James E. Coleman, Jr., John S. Bradway Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law and Director of the Wrongful Conviction Clinic and Center for Criminal Justice and Professional Responsibility
Elana Fogel, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Criminal Defense Clinic
Max Tinter, Duke Law '26 and Research Assistant with the Wilson Center for Science and Justice and member of the Duke Decarceration Project
A reception will follow.

This event is free, but tickets are required.
Register online: https://duke.is/beyondbars

Cosponsored by the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law, Duke Law Alumni and Development Office, Duke Law Triangle, the FHI Social Practice Lab, the Duke Artistic Research Initiative supported by Mellon Foundation, and the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies Visiting Artists Series.

Our Beautiful Planet Earth: Family Day at the Nasher
2024-10-13 13:00
Join us for a free, interactive, family-oriented classical concert full of fun, playful music in the Nasher Museum's Sculpture Garden. The music will inspire kids of all ages to celebrate and protect nature. Picnic blankets and chairs will be available, but we encourage you to bring your own as well. Parking is free at the Nasher for Family Day events!

Artistry. Wellness. Passion. Community. These values unite the members of the Durham Medical Orchestra, which draws together health-related professionals, medical and graduate students of the life sciences, and community members. Under the leadership of Conductor and Artistic Director Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant, our performances offer the benefits of music to wide audiences around the Triangle.

Family Day: Our Beautiful Planet Earth – An Outdoor Concert
2024-10-13 13:00
Enjoy an interactive, family-oriented classical concert, Our Beautiful Planet Earth, in partnership with the Durham Medical Orchestra in our Sculpture Garden. The pieces performed will be fun and playful ones that kids will recognize instantly! Picnic blankets and chairs will be available, but we encourage you to bring your own as well.

Parking at the Nasher on Family Day Sundays is free of charge!

Gallery Guide Tour with a Twist
2024-10-17 18:00, 2024-11-21 18:00
Join our experienced Gallery Guides for a quirky tour of the museum! After learning more about our exhibitions, we will sketch back-to-back, go on a scavenger hunt and more. You will see the museum in a whole new light!

If you plan to do dinner and a tour, we recommend you make dinner reservations ahead of time.

Artist Talk - Down South Dirt with Ashon Crawley
2024-10-23 17:30
Interdisciplinary artist and scholar Ashon Crawley will present on the relation of dirt and soil to the making of Black life, and how degrading the earth is part of the attempt to unmake Black possibility. Thinking through "Cancer Alley" in Louisiana and soil erosion in Mississippi, what practices are available to help us conceive life otherwise?

Down South Dirt is the first installment of Crawley's public events during the 2024-'25 Keohane Professorship at Duke and UNC, collectively titled Otherwise, We are Down South Folk-Dirt, Water, Air

Presented by DukeArts and the Duke Office of the Provost

Parking for this event is free.

Ashon Crawley is Professor of Religious Studies and African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. He is author of Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility (Fordham University Press), an investigation of aesthetics and performance as modes of collective, social imagination; and The Lonely Letters (Duke University Press), an epistolary exploration of the interrelation of blackness, mysticism, quantum mechanics and love. He is currently working on a third book, tentatively titled "Made Instrument" (WW Norton), about the impact of the AIDS crisis for black social life. Entering the conversation by considering musicians, singers and choir directors that labored for black churches, "Made Instrument" explores the ways gender, sex, sexuality remain unthought and untheorized but are no less real practices of the living and the dead. A multidisciplinary artist working in the visual and the sonic, Crawley is a Yaddo interdisciplinary arts fellow, a MacDowell interdisciplinary arts fellow, and a New City Arts Initiative Fellow, a LIT (Learning It Together) Artist Fellow and his work has been featured on the National Mall in Washington DC, at Second Street Gallery and Welcome Gallery both in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Bridge Projects and the California African American Museum both in Los Angeles, California. All his writing and his approach to art practices is about what he calls otherwise possibility.

Down South Dirt: Lecture and Reception
2024-10-23 17:30
In this opening public event of the 2024-25 Keohane Professorship, interdisciplinary artist and scholar Ashon Crawley will present on the relation of dirt and soil to the making of Black life, and how degrading the earth is part of the attempt to unmake Black possibility. Thinking through "Cancer Alley" in Louisiana and soil erosion in Mississippi, what practices are available to help us conceive life otherwise?

About the Project:
"Down South Dirt" is the first installment of Crawley's public events during the Keohane Professorship at Duke and UNC, collectively titled "Otherwise, We are Down South Folk-Dirt, Water, Air"

"Black folks have been severed from land, water, air. This is the fact of antiblack racism. Indigenous siblings in the Americas know this severance as well. In black, this has meant being forcibly transported from the African continent's western coast to various ports and parts of the world. In the Americas, the ports and parts were primarily southern, down south, before such a concept even existed. The port is the meeting place of dirt, water and air through architectural design. Is there a wisdom, a thought practice, an approach to making things, that can prompt in us a way to move and think and do and be otherwise? Is there a wisdom, a thought practice, an approach to making things that not only lets us notice but lets us work against the continued antiblack racist imposition that severs us from dirt, water and air?" -Ashon Crawley

Nasher Exhibition Guided Tour with Sherrill Roland and Pedro Lasch
2025-01-08 12:00
Join artist Sherrill Roland and curator Pedro Lasch for the last public event of their Nasher exhibition before it closes. The exhibition is the culmination of a two-year Mellon Foundation Fellowship at FHI's Social Practice Lab and Duke's Artistic Research Initiative (https://sites.fhi.duke.edu/socialpracticelab/artistic-research-initiative/).

The event is free and open to all. It will include a guided tour and conversation. More information on the show can be found at the following link: https://nasher.duke.edu/exhibitions/processing-systems/.

Please RSVP here (https://duke.is/Roland-lasch/).

Photo credit: Photo of installation by Sherrill Roland at the Nasher Museum by Brian Quimby.

Student Gallery Talk | Climate Hope: Photographic Works from the Nasher Collection
2025-02-27 18:00
Join Duke undergraduate and graduate students for a gallery talk on their co-curated exhibition, Climate Hope: Photographic Works from the Nasher Collection, on view in the Academic Focus Gallery. The photographs selected invite us to reflect on the effect of human activity on the global climate, and the role that hope and youth play in shaping our collective future.

This exhibition was organized by the Bass Connections Team, Climate Hope: Action Rooted in Visual Arts + Nature Education, and is comprised of team leads Rakan DiarBakerli, K-12 and Family Programs Educator; Katie Hyde, Lecturing Fellow in the Program in Education at the Center for Documentary Studies; Ellen C. Raimond, Associate Curator of Academic Initiatives, and Gabrielle Tenedero, Museum Educator for Student Engagement. Duke graduate project leads include Bren Vienrich-Felling and Katelyn Lester, both in the Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts program at the Center for Documentary Studies. Duke undergraduate and graduate team members include Akuorkor Allotey, Summer Bell, Phoenix Chapital, Yueqi Dou, Sophia Irion, Artivista Karlin, Sadie Radice, Xintong Sun and Biying Wang.

Image: Hong Lei, Speak, Memory of Five‑Needle Pine, 2005. Collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. Museum purchase, 2007.2.1.4. © Hong Lei. Courtesy of the artist and Chambers Fine Art, New York.

Nasher Museum of Art + Lunch at Nasher Café
2025-03-13 10:30 - 13:00
Staying at Duke for Spring Break? Join the Academic Guides on a guided tour of the Nasher Museum of Art and enjoy lunch at the Nasher Café. Registration required via Qualtrics by March 7th at noon.

The Ethics of Memory with David Treuer, Ryan Falcioni, and Bz Zhang
2025-03-28 17:30
Join the Kenan Institute for Ethics for a talk and conversation on the ways we remember the past, whether visibly or invisibly, and how memory is a moral enterprise that shapes how we understand ourselves and how we imagine the future.

This multidisciplinary exploration of the ethics of memory begins with a lecture by New York Times-bestselling author and National Book Award finalist David Treuer, anthropologist, novelist and nonfiction writer, and professor of English at USC Dornsife. Ojibwe from the Leech Lake reservation in northern Minnesota, Treuer's work explores how popular narratives about Native Americans have relegated them to either the peripheries of American life or to the distant past - as exemplified by the treatment of Wounded Knee as the "final chapter" of their history. In his most recent nonfiction work, "The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from the 1890 to the Present," Treuer blends history, reportage, and memoir to create a portrait of Native American survival and resistance through era after era of depredation.

Following the lecture, a conversation between Treuer, Ryan Falcioni, and Bz Zhang will open the theme of ethics and memory through multidisciplinary perspectives. A professor of philosophy at Chaffey College, Falcioni's scholarship explores the "deep story" that gave rise to the current iteration of Christian nationalism and its opposition to social justice initiatives. A Los Angeles-based architect, organizer and artist, Zhang's work explores the ways in which dominant ideologies are embedded in material forms as well as their physical and digital documentation.

MAKE AMERICA, an accompanying installation by Zhang at the Kenan Institute for Ethics in the West Duke Building on view on 3/17-3/29, will invite visitors to assemble and reassemble elements used to construct national memory, showcasing how physical and cultural constructions of place are entangled with each other.

This event is free and open to the public. The talk and conversation will be followed by a Q&A with the audience, with a reception afterwards.

This event is cosponsored by the Native America Studies Initiative and the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University.

Signature Artist Lecture: Cannupa Hanska Luger
2025-04-03 18:00
6:00 PM Lecture Hall doors open

6:30 PM Artist talk

Followed by reception and cash bar

Registration required (livestream also available)
https://nasher.duke.edu/event/signature-artist-lecture-cannupa-hanska-luger/

Parking is free at the museum's lower lot. Free valet service is also available at the Anderson St entrance of the museum.

Join us for the annual Signature Artist Lecture this spring, celebrating the exhibition Cannupa Hanska Luger: Speechless. Luger's work broadly engages with issues of agency, consumerism, futurity, and Indigeneity. The exhibition includes recent large-scale sculptures and installations alongside smaller mixed media and paper works and a single channel video. Come and hear Luger speak about his work, the exhibition, and his ongoing project Future Ancestral Technologies.

Cannupa Hanska Luger (b. 1979) is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, and European descent. Working with a wide array of media-video, performance, ceramic, textiles, found materials, and most recently paper-the artist activates cultural and

LibraryFest 2025: Writing Your Multigenerational Story with Dr Zelda Lockhart
2025-04-10 16:00
Dr. Zelda Lockhart will share the unanswered family questions that led to generational research and the writing of her novels Trinity and Cold Running Creek. All will be led in an interactive experience to begin the journey of researching and writing a multigenerational fiction or non-fiction story.

Bio:

Dr. ZELDA LOCKHART is a current Fulbright Specialist engaging in cross-cultural story projects for generational healing in the U.S. and abroad. She holds a PhD in Expressive Art Therapies, an MA in Literature, and a certificate in writing, directing and editing from the NY Film Academy. Her work as an author and expressive arts consultant and educator centers on the power of story and nature to connect us across barriers and to heal our generations. She is winner of the Lambda Literary Foundation 2024 Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-career Novelist Prize. Her books include HarperCollins 2023 release Trinity (a novel) translated and released by HarperCollins France 2024 as Entends ma voix. Her other works include The Soul of the Full-Length Manuscript: Turning Life's Wounds into the Gift of Literary Fiction, Memoir, or Poetry. Her other novels are Fifth Born which was a Barnes & Noble Discovery selection and a Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award finalist, Cold Running Creek a Black Caucus of the American Library Association Honor Fiction award winner, and Fifth Born II: The Hundredth Turtle a 2011 Lambda Literary Award finalist.

Lockhart is Director at Her Story Garden Studios: Inspiring Black Women to Self-Define, Heal, and Liberate Through Our Stories & Nature. She is a dynamic speaker and educator who travels the US and abroad utilizing story and nature to inspire individuals to heal, ​​maintain healthy relationships, lead effectively, and work productively and gracefully in community.

Library Fest is paid for and sponsored by Durham County Library and the Durham Library
Foundation, with the support of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.

Nasher – Duke Campus Farm Tour
2025-04-12 10:00
Join us for collaborative program between Duke Campus Farm and the Nasher Museum. We will start with a tour at the museum considering art that helps us explore how humans engage with nature. After an hour at the museum, we will provide a shuttle to Duke Campus Farm where we will have the opportunity to ground our conversation through a tour of the farm and time for work and/or reflection.

Space is limited and registration is required.

>> https://duke.is/m/pk2s <<

9:45 AM Meet at the Nasher Museum
10:00 AM Tour starts at the Nasher Museum
11:00 AM Take shuttle to the Duke Campus Farm (transportation provided)
Noon Return to the Nasher Museum

University Student Exclusive! MUSE Student Night at the Nasher
2025-04-17 18:00
Join Nasher MUSE and duArts to celebrate the student-curated exhibition, "On the Same Wavelength: Art Science & Conservation."

Enjoy art-making activities inspired by the exhibitions, student performers, and capture the night with a selfie from our Polaroid stations.

This event is free and open to ALL college students!

Free food and parking.

Open House pARTy
2025-09-05 16:00
Launch into the new school year with free arts activities hosted by Duke Arts and the Nasher Museum of Art. Open to all undergrads, mingle with classmates while enjoying snacks, live music, workshops, and of course-art!

Building a Vision: Nasher Museum at 20
2025-09-19 19:00
Join Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art & Art History, and Trevor Schoonmaker, Mary D.B.T. and James H. Semans Director of the Nasher Museum, for a conversation about how the museum's bold collecting vision and groundbreaking exhibitions quickly established a young university museum as a leader within the global art world.

Over the past two decades, the Nasher Museum has uniquely focused on supporting historically underrepresented artists and has traveled its exhibitions to major museums across the country, from the Studio Museum in Harlem to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Learn how the museum arrived at its distinctive identity and where it is going from here.

Nasher Museum 20th Anniversary Celebration
2025-10-18 12:00
Celebrate two decades of creativity and community at the Nasher Museum 20th Anniversary Celebration! Join us as we commemorate this milestone with the grand opening of the Nancy A. Nasher & David J. Haemisegger Family Sculpture Garden, four bold new exhibitions, and a full day of family‑friendly art activations, performances, and hands‑on experiences.

The celebration culminates in a highlight performance from Grammy‑Award-winning producer 9th Wonder, who will take the stage at 5 PM in what promises to be an unforgettable evening.

Parking is FREE and admission is always free and open to all.

An Evening with Nnenna Freelon: Conversation and Book Launch
2025-10-23 18:00
Join Durham's beloved jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon for the launch for her new memoir, Beneath the Skin of Sorrow: Improvisations on Loss (Duke University Press). She will be joined in conversation by authors Mark Anthony Neal and Karla F.C. Holloway. She may even break into song! The conversation will be followed by a Q&A and book signing. Books will be available for sale on site, or, if you wish to skip the line, you may pre-purchase directly from Duke University Press. To ensure you have the book in hand for the event, we recommend ordering directly from Duke University Press by Wednesday, October 8. Other retailers may have different shipping timelines.

Nasher MUSE Study Hall
2025-12-08 14:00
Looking for a place to study for finals? The Nasher Museum will be open Monday, December 8 from 2 PM to 10 PM, exclusively for Duke students! Enjoy free warm cookies, fresh fruit, coffee, and hot chocolate. Cozy study nooks, tables, and outlets will be available. Tutoring offered for various courses by the Academic Resource Center. Bring your study materials and stop by!

The Nasher Café will be open for grab-and-go service and accepting Food Points!

4 PM: Test-Taking Strategies with the Academic Resource Center (Lecture Hall)

7 PM: Primal Scream (Sculpture Garden)

ALL DAY: Study breaks in the galleries and coloring materials available from the Front Desk

Make & Flow: Gel-Plate Printing and Z-Fold Bookmaking
2026-02-26 17:00
The purpose of this workshop is to help participants cultivate creativity as a daily, sustainable practice through reflection, experimentation, and shared intention. We will begin with an introduction to gel-plate printing, using color, texture, and layering techniques to create a collection of printed papers. Participants will then explore collage to create a colorful cover before constructing a two-pamphlet Z-fold book. Through guided prompts and playful material exploration participants will develop creative practices they can carry into their everyday lives

BITE: A Performance by Raheleh Filsoofi
2026-04-02 18:30
Performance: 6:30 PM (Great Hall)
Artist Talk: 7:00 PM (Lecture Hall)
Reception to Follow

The Nasher is hosting an evening with artist Raheleh Filsoofi, who returns to the museum following her fall 2025 research visit to present a live performance of BITE, an ongoing ritual-based artwork exploring memory, migration, and the body's relationship to land.

During her visit, Filsoofi gathered native clay from the Nasher Museum grounds, which she has transformed into ceramic plates specifically for this performance. BITE centers on the intimate and deliberate act of biting the clay plate-an imprint of presence, resistance, and reclamation. Through this gesture, Filsoofi engages the material histories of place and the embodied experience of marking, shaping, and being shaped by one's environment. One of the plates from this performance will join the museum's collection.

Following the performance, Filsoofi will give an artist talk in the Lecture Hall, expanding on her process, themes, and the significance of creating and using locally sourced clay within her practice. A brief reception will follow.

This program is free and open to the public.
