As the one-year anniversary of the Gregg’s reopening approaches, the museum’s faculty and staff strive to better the exhibits, collection and amenities while still hosting thousands of visitors each month.
Mary Hauser, associate director and registrar at the Gregg Museum, said that with a permanent new location, the museum has been able to benefit from more exhibitions, frequent visitors and more over the past 10 months.
“I think the kinds of exhibitions we’ve had have certainly been exciting,” Hauser said. “And then, just the fact that we have been closed for so long, we’ve had a lot of people who have been waiting for a long time to either come back and see out new space or to be able to come see us for the first time.”
According to Hauser, the Gregg has attracted thousands of visitors from many different parts of the state, country and world.
“We had probably around 20,000 visitors to date, actually a little bit more than that, and that’s just straight up walk in the door visitor,” Hauser said. “Those visitors have been from every county in the state, every state in the country, and then from 41 countries around the world.”
Hauser attributes some of the success of the museum throughout the past year to its new location just off Hillsborough Street, which came from the 2013 renovation of Tally Student Union, where the museum used to be housed.
“I think our location is also a big draw,” Hauser said. “The fact that we have parking right here, and we have such a beautiful space. The grounds around are so beautiful and we’re walkable from other things.”
Although the Gregg has seen success since it reopened last August, Hauser said the staff have not only had to manage new exhibitions but have also been learning how to supervise a new building on campus.
“I think just learning a new building is just very different,” Hauser said. “… The fact that this building doesn’t have any other units in it, so there’s no other support. We’ve moved from a different zone on campus, so the facilities folks that we work with are different. Just learning all those new relationships and interactions and learning how this building works.”
Along with faculty and staff, another big group of museum supporters that make running the museum possible are the Gregg’s student ambassadors. Savannah Soule, a fifth-year studying design and film studies and a student ambassador for the museum, said there are many aspects about the museum that make it unique, made possible by the relocation.
“We have our special collections and are a resource for the University,” Soule said. “And then, the fact that it’s an art and design museum is kind of unique.… Our director, Roger, likes to include outside art which is like art that is not necessarily by people who went to art school and are the traditional passive artists, and then also local North Carolina artists. You get a regional feel and it’s a little something different than ‘oh this is just like your standard what’s in an art museum.’”
Hauser said her next big goal for the museum is getting the museum’s entire collection to the new location, something that was not possible until recently because of the timing of the move.
“The next big goal from my perspective, is to get the collection here,” Hauser said. “In a perfect world, we would have moved the collection and then opened the building so that we would have been operational sort of front of house from the exhibition side as well as behind the scenes where we can have researchers, host classes and things like that.”
According to Hauser, the museum can only display a small percentage of the collection at a time, so another important goal is to get the behind-the-scenes spaces finished.
“The fact that we can only ever show less than 1% of our collection at a time means that it’s important for us to have the behind-the-scenes option for people to research, to look up something online and have questions, to have that back up and running,” Hauser said.
Because the exhibits at The Gregg Museum rotate every few months, Soule said students should come more than once during their time at NC State.
“People should always be checking back in, too, because we rotate our exhibits so there’s probably going to be something new,” Soule said. “Don’t just go one semester and not go again for the rest of your college time.”
Soule also said that despite what they are studying, all students can benefit from visiting the museum.
“Personally, I’m a big supporter of the arts,” Soule said. “I think that it really supplements your educational experience no matter what you’re studying. I think it just provides really interesting cultural commentary and really interesting way to think about things.”
Students interested in the Gregg Museum’s free student membership can visit the museum’s website. The Gregg Museum is located at 1903 Hillsborough Street.
