Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, Visitor Guide & Things to Do Nearby

The Weatherspoon Art Museum is the art museum of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, on Spring Garden Street in Greensboro. It holds a large collection of modern and contemporary American art, and it was the first art gallery in the University of North Carolina system. From the street it looks like a quiet campus building, which makes the art inside easy to miss.

The story behind it

The museum began in 1941, when Gregory Ivy founded the Woman's College Art Gallery in a former physics laboratory in the McIver Building. A year later the gallery took the name of Elizabeth McIver Weatherspoon, and it has carried that name ever since.

Today the museum is housed in the Anne and Benjamin Cone Building, designed by the architect Romaldo Giurgola of Mitchell/Giurgola Architects. The collection runs to thousands of works, mostly modern and contemporary American art, with names such as Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler and Andy Warhol. The museum is also linked to the Cone sisters, Etta and Claribel Cone, whose bequest brought it prints and bronzes by Henri Matisse.

What to look for

• Notice how the Cone Building sits among the campus buildings, a modern museum that is easy to pass without realising what it holds.
• Look at the entrance and the lines of the building and think of Romaldo Giurgola, the architect who designed it.
• If you go inside, look for the Matisse prints and bronzes that came through the Cone sisters' gift.
• Keep an eye out for the big names of American modern art, including de Kooning, Frankenthaler and Warhol, though what is on view changes with the exhibitions.

Tips for your visit

• Allow about an hour if you want to go inside and see a few galleries, or ten minutes for the exterior and a look around the campus.
• Check current opening hours and admission details before you go, as exhibitions and schedules change.
• The museum stands on the UNCG campus, so it combines easily with a stroll through the surrounding grounds and streets.
• Daylight shows the architecture and the campus setting best, so a morning or afternoon visit works well.

See it on a quest

The museum is one stop on Ghost Hunt in Greensboro. You walk to it as part of a longer route through the area, the app tells you about each place as you arrive, and you solve a puzzle in front of what you see. One ticket covers the whole group, and you can start whenever you like.

It also appears on Murder Mystery: Death in the Shadows in Greensboro. This is a good way to see the building as part of the streets around it, with a puzzle to solve on the spot and no guide or group to wait for. One ticket covers the whole group.