Exhibitions

"Flora Symbolica: The Art of Flowers" explores the meanings and messages of flowers in American art of the 20th and 21st centuries, highlighting the timeless connections among art, nature, and human experience.

This is the second iteration of the interactive exhibit "Forest Feels" by Amanda N. Simons. Visitors are invited to make this blooming forest your own. Contribute some flowers and signs of the changing season. Let’s celebrate growth and progress. The warm months are arriving in Asheville, and the city will look much different. So, let’s celebrate that difference together.

A response to the exhibition Asheville Strong: Celebrating Art and Community After Hurricane Helene, visitors are invited to add their own unique designs to a community canvas highlighting how art brings people together. The Asheville Strong community canvas was made possible by local artist Nate Barton, local non-profit Art Kit Aid, and Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff!

The Asheville Art Museum is a regional affiliate partner of the annual Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, hosting an annual juried competition for students in grades 7–12 from all across Western North Carolina.

"Asheville Strong: Celebrating Art and Community After Hurricane Helene" is a special, non-juried exhibition which celebrates the strength and diversity of our regional arts community acknowledging the significant impact of Hurricane Helene on the lives of artists across Southern Appalachia. Our aim is to provide an opportunity and venue for impacted artists to showcase their work, connect with each other and collectors, and join together in a collective act of resilience.

This exhibition explores how the land, the people, and the built environment of Asheville and its surrounding environs were interpreted through early 20th century vintage postcards. Some images show the sophisticated architecture of the region, including views of downtown Asheville, the Biltmore Estate, and Grove Park Inn. Other images show views of the scenic mountains and landscapes that first drew tourists and outdoor enthusiasts to the region.

The "Earth Project" series (1969), by Robert Morris, presents ten ideas for works of art shaped out of earth, atmospheric conditions, and built environments in the form of architectural plans.

This exhibition traces the historical, stylistic, and conceptual origins of work that either embraces or refuses the element of chance in ceramics, looking at modern and contemporary work made in Western North Carolina.

Western North Carolina is important in the history of American glass art. Several artists of the Studio Glass Movement came to the region, including its founder Harvey K. Littleton. The Museum is dedicated to collecting American studio glass and within that umbrella, explores the work of Artists connected to Western North Carolina. A variety of techniques and a willingness to push boundaries of the medium can be seen in this selection of works from the Museum's Collection.

One of two inaugural exhibitions is Intersections in American Art, the major reinstallation and reinterpretation of the Museum’s Collection in a much-enlarged gallery space.

Art and artists often encourage us to consider our place in the world. Artworks in the Windgate Foundation Atrium and Museum Plaza bring many separate parts together to make a unified whole and offer a variety of possibilities for how to navigate our physical world on regional, national, and global levels.

"Coatlicue & Las Meninas" is the newest addition to Pedro Lasch’s ongoing series "Black Mirror/Espejo Negro." Throughout the series, Lasch creates a dialogue among works of art from early modern Europe and pre-Columbian sculptural figures, employing the mirror as an emblem that interrogates the tension between presence and absence, colonial histories, and the politics of visibility. "Coatlicue & Las Meninas: The Stanford Edition" (2007/2025) is the first artwork commissioned for “What Can Become of Us?,” a collaboration between the Stanford Institute for Advancing Just Societies (IAJS) and Zócalo Public Square, envisioning new perspectives on migration, America’s diverse communities, and how people come together across differences.

American Made: Paintings and Sculpture from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection features more than 70 works of art by renowned American artists, beautifully illustrating the distinctive styles and thought-provoking art explored by American artists over the past two centuries. Though many objects from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection have been on view at other museums, this exhibition features the best of the collection brought together in one location.

Immerse yourself in a poignant virtual reality (VR) short film that delves into environmental consciousness and the delicate balance of nature. "The Last Chair of the Forest and the Plastic Bottle" transports viewers to the ancient Pisgah Forest, where the beauty of the last remaining tree is juxtaposed against the haunting presence of a plastic bottle.

This exhibition imagines an apocalyptic landscape of withered plant forms that come to life when activated with augmented reality. In collaboration with animator and media artist Grant Kirkpatrick, Ruffner illuminates the delicate balance between nature and the artificial human-built world around us, putting forth an optimistic hope for the future: that technology can be a means to understand and help save the earth from environmental devastation

Bill Viola’s "Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier, 1979" on loan from Art Bridges is an immersive experience that explores the ideas of death and regeneration in nature. In a darkened room, sounds from nature envelop the viewer, as a placid pool of water reflects a projected image of Mount Rainier onto a screen. The water is periodically disturbed, causing the image to dissolve and slowly recompose as the pool settles.

Shifting Perceptions features a selection of photographs from the Museum's Collection and is presented in a trio of sections, each featuring seemingly opposing forces: Natural/Unnatural, Together/Apart, and Inside/Out.

Honoring Nature explores the sublime natural landscapes of the Smokey Mountains of Western North Carolina and Tennessee.

The New Salon: A Contemporary View offers a modern take on the prestigious tradition of the Parisian Salon with the diversity and innovation of today’s art world. This exhibition integrates a broad array of artists from multiple mediums and genres, including Pop Surrealism, Street Art, and Graffiti.

This exhibition features a selection of botanical and wildlife prints by renowned watercolor artist Sallie Middleton.

American Art in the Atomic Age features works created during the 1940s–1960s. Much of the art during this time expressed the uncertainty of the era, often relying on the automatism and biomorphic forms that had originated with Surrealism.

This exhibition highlights the beauty of the Moores' decades of collecting foundational artists in the Studio Glass Movement.

Golden Hour: Olympians Photographed by Walter Iooss Jr. highlights dozens of photographer Walter Iooss Jr.’s images from the Museum’s Collection.

Ralph Burns has long been recognized as a documentary photographer whose images have captured the diverse and enigmatic nature of ritual and religion, and who has explored the subjective and often defining nature of belief, worship, and culture.

Sallie Middleton has long been considered one of the most gifted painters of plants and animals. She possessed a remarkable eye for detail, a skilled hand to record what she saw and a keen imagination to shape her enchanted images.

DIGITAL EXHIBITION: The idea of the past and the future subscribes to a linear timeline that many artists actively seek to subvert in their artwork. If the binary of past and future is erased, what new parameters are opened for looking at and considering a work of art? How would that freedom allow artists and viewers to consider multiple realities? What was once futuristic can now be seen as retro and what was once old-fashioned can inspire new experimentation. When imagination is introduced into art, the idea of a multiverse becomes a possibility, where more than one experience can be real and shared. This digital exhibition considers how artists and their artwork conceive of the future and how they recontextualize representations of the past to expand the perspectives shared with audiences.

DIGITAL EXHIBITION: Dear Lorna, Love Ray features letters written by Ray Johnson to Lorna Blaine Halper while Johnson was a student at Black Mountain College. The letters reveal snippets of daily life at the college, Johnson’s experience of his growth as an artist, and early examples of Mail art, a movement that Johnson helped found.

DIGITAL EXHIBITION: Many artists, like the ones in this digital exhibition, create art with the intention for it to be sold. An artist’s experiences, identities, and class can inform where they sell their artwork. Different types of markets also play a role in an artwork’s availability. Sometimes the market is a craft fair, where the artist must apply and be accepted as a member. Perhaps the artwork was sold from a display in the artist’s front yard. A client may have commissioned the artwork directly from the artist. Artwork that is produced in large quantities at a factory can be marketed to a national audience. By learning more about the artist and the story behind their art, one gains insight into the various markets in which the artwork was sold.

DIGITAL EXHIBITION: This exhibition follows select artists from their time at Black Mountain College (BMC) through their early years in the Beat scene of 1950s San Francisco.

DIGITAL EXHIBITION: Tensions can set the groundwork for an artist’s creation—whether they reflect lived experiences or abstract ideas. Many artists address conflicts around race and gender within their own lives and for generations prior through their artwork. Sometimes the tension illustrated within an artwork deals with the object itself and focuses on the material from which it is made. In this digital exhibition, these discrepancies are used as a mechanism by which to question everything from museum standards, which were often created with a colonial mindset, to previously held beliefs in materiality. By setting up an opposition within a work, either in its context or in its makeup, the tensions in these works address something greater than themselves.

DIGITAL EXHIBITION: Art often tells a story. The visualization of a narrative through text or symbolic imagery separates the works grouped in this digital exhibition. Artworks with written language integrated into their composition tell a story with words. Artworks that use images of figures—humans, animals, spirits, things, and popular culture—tell a story using symbols and recognizable objects. Within these two categories, artists convey the narrative of their own lives or culture, whether from present day, history, or tales rooted in myth or legend. The art selected in this exhibition illustrates these many different story trajectories and celebrates the diversity of the artists.

DIGITAL EXHIBITION: Unboxing Contexts: The Unrealized Projects of Douglas D. Ellington examines unbuilt architectural projects that were designed by noted 20th century architect Douglas D. Ellington. Ellington is well known for designing several significant Art Deco structures in western North Carolina, such as the Asheville City Building and the S&W Cafeteria.