Maya Freelon’s Grounded exhibit brings generations of art, architecture and music together at the Gregg Museum—inside a building her father helped shape.
The Gregg Museum of Art & Design is going full Freelon—showcasing a family that runs deep with artistic, architectural and musical talent.
At the center is Grounded, artist-in-residence Maya Freelon’s newly opened retrospective, featuring immersive installations and works spanning more than two decades of her career, while pieces by her father and great-grandfather stretch the story across generations—with some elements even spilling beyond the galleries.
The setting could hardly be more fitting. Maya’s father, the late architect Phil Freelon—who also served as principal architect for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture—led the team behind the Gregg’s 2017 renovation and expansion. In other words, Grounded is unfolding inside a space her father literally helped create.
“I just feel really great about being in a space and transforming the space,” says Maya, who grew up in Durham and later taught at NC State’s College of Design. The transformation starts with the material most associated with her work: tissue paper.
While in graduate school, Maya found a stack of tissue paper in her grandmother’s basement that had been stained by a water leak. Her grandmother had saved it for her. “When I found it, she said she was saving it for me,” recalls Maya. “How did she know to do that?”
Since then, that delicate material has become the foundation for vibrant, layered works that have carried Maya through exhibitions across the country. Grounded brings those pieces together with photography, paintings and new installations, tracing a practice shaped by family, memory, loss, healing and transformation.
One of the earliest works is a small painting Maya made for her grandmother when she was around 8 or 9, which will be displayed alongside photography, paintings, and vibrant larger-than-life layered tissue paper sculptures. Other pieces in the exhibit by her father Phil and great-grandfather Allan Freelon Sr. widen that personal history, while Maya’s newest installations bring it squarely into the present.
At the Gregg, the family timeline has an unusually resonant backdrop. While designing the building, Phil looked to the museum’s textile and weaving collection for inspiration, architect Kenneth Luker later told Museum Director Sara Segerlin—including for the banding that wraps its exterior.
For an exhibition built around Maya’s billowing layers of tissue paper, the connection feels almost uncanny.
For her part, Segerlin first began envisioning what would become Grounded at the Gregg—a season of four exhibitions anchored by Maya’s retrospective—nearly two years ago while talking with students, faculty and Raleigh community members about what they wanted from the museum. Meeting Maya—and learning more about a practice rooted in family, grief, healing and connection—gave that idea its center.
“That’s really where I recognized the Gregg Museum can be a place that grounds people,” maintains Segerlin.
For Curatorial Assistant Meredith Osborne, the hope is that Raleigh visitors see something familiar in those stories. “I wanted the community to see themselves or someone they knew, or just learn something about the area they’re immersed in,” she says.
The museum extends the opportunity to participate too. Visitors can add to a tissue-paper quilt that will grow in the gallery over time. Maya leads a guided tour and meditation Oct. 29, while NC State’s Panoramic Dance Project brings new choreography into the museum for the Nov. 7 opening celebration.
For one season, the Gregg becomes something of a Freelon family portrait in motion: Phil’s architecture surrounding Maya’s work, Allan Sr.’s paintings hanging in the galleries, and Nnenna and Pierce filling the space with music.
“The whole family, coming together and sharing their talents—it’s really a dream come true,” Maya says. And for Raleigh, it gives one of Hillsborough Street’s most distinctive spaces good reason for another look.
Raleigh’s arts scene is heating up. A diverse cast of theater productions, exhibits, ballet and opera performances, and so much more are set to steal the scene—and up the drama across multiple genres and stages. Consider this your ultimate culture guide to it all.
Raleigh’s next big bet: Plans in the works for living creative district Areté
What makes humanity human? For locals Diana Dotter and Steve Hepler, it’s the arts. But while Raleigh has become a powerhouse for tech, life sciences and business, there’s a growing sentiment that the city’s creative infrastructure hasn’t kept pace. It’s a gap the dynamic duo hopes to fill with Areté Creative District, a hub for Triangle artists to live, work and collaborate under one dome—while making the area a destination for digital media and entertainment.
Raleigh’s creative gap is nothing new. In April of last year, North Carolina Theatre—Raleigh’s largest professional live musical theater company for 40 years—shut down after declaring bankruptcy and failing to acquire state funding. To boot, many individuals and businesses have voiced struggles securing rehearsal space, artists of all mediums have a hard time finding community, and the city has seen a shrinkage in big-name festivals. Dotter and Hepler have witnessed those challenges firsthand and began envisioning Areté about a year ago to address them—and then some.
Norwich University of the Arts
The name (ah-reh-TAY)—which comes from an ancient Greek term meaning “the fullest expression of creative human potential”—mirrors the standard of the self-sustaining district, which would provide creative opportunities for cross-pollination, collaboration, education and employment across all arts sectors: film and television, theater, visual arts, digital media, design, music, dance and beyond.
“I think artists are incredibly important to humanity,” emphasizes Dotter, who spent 20 years in digital media and entertainment, producing feature films, short films, documentaries and content for corporations. “Artists are the beacon in chaos, the beacons in change. They are the people who hold the mirror up to society and say, ‘This is what’s happening,’ and ‘Is this who we want to be?’”
Not just a project, but a living, breathing ecosystem—and a prolific one at that—Areté’s campus would be divided into six zones: an AI and digital creative lab, a digital sound stage, a black box theater, indoor and outdoor performance venues, artist housing, and year-round festival grounds.
While there are comparable creative campuses across the globe, many offer only portions of what Areté includes, maintains Dotter. Read: It wouldn’t just fill Raleigh’s arts gap—it would be the first-of-its kind district in the country, serving the $1+ trillion U.S. creative economy and 8.5 million Americans employed in creative sectors.
One major differentiator: The district would boast the largest LED digital sound stage between Atlanta and DC—at 75-feet, enabling large-scale productions—opening up opportunities for film partnerships with big names like Amazon and Netflix.
With potential strategic partnerships spanning businesses, schools and other cultural institutions—including local theaters—Areté would also give the next generation of artists a landing spot coming out of college, as well as provide resources and locations for training.
“We have some great theaters doing their thing, but there’s no one place for them to land once they graduate, so they’re forced to go to LA, New York, Atlanta,” says Dotter. “And so we lose this creative brain power, that workforce, to other markets.”
Guangzhou Senke Electronics Co.
In addition to bolstering artistic contributions to the economy through direct employment in the arts, media tech and event production, Areté will serve the public via weekly programming in partnership with existing theaters, arts orgs and creatives like intimate black box productions, orchestral concerts, dance and comedy showcases, art installations, performances, and festivals—to name just a few activations—in the hopes of “attracting tourism, serving existing businesses and attracting new businesses to the region,” adds Dotter.
The district would also embrace AI as part of the creative future—rather than treating it as a threat—putting Raleigh at the forefront of the AI boom and giving artists already using the technology the opportunity to help shape the industry and create original work. “It’s here—it’s part of our future,” says Dotter.
The AI lab—along with sound stage rentals, rehearsal and performance space, education and certificate programs, artist housing, festivals, corporate partnerships and naming, and grants and philanthropy—will help generate revenue to fund arts operations.
As of now, Dotter and Hepler are still trying to find a site for the district, noting central locations like Downtown South and Dix Park as strong contenders—the latter given it’s already a campus with existing buildings that could be converted into artist housing, for instance, explains Hepler. Moving forward, the pair plans to host a stakeholder breakfast in the fall with civic, academia, private and philanthropic leaders, followed by a feasibility and impact study, and a public one-day creative economy conference where they’ll officially launch the narrative.
Like Research Triangle Park, Raleigh has the opportunity to be at the forefront of a visionary artistic movement with Areté’s game-changing one-of-a-kind campus—a move that would prove Oak City’s creative community is not just an amenity, but a foundation.
“This whole concept is really about human potential,” suggests Dotter. “The infrastructure that gets built now defines who leads the creative economy for the next 20 years.”
Forty years, 700+ exhibitions, over 2,500 free events—and an immeasurable impact on Raleigh’s creative community. That’s the legacy Artspace has built since 1986—and it shows no signs of slowing down. As the nonprofit hits 40, it continues to back local artists and bring people Downtown—proof a thriving arts scene isn’t just cultural, it’s catalytic. artspacenc.org
Raleigh’s most over-the-top music tradition—a six-night, full-costume, secret-lineup spectacle—is getting the PBS NC treatment Aug. 21.
Raleigh’s rowdiest musical tradition is getting the big-screen treatment. The Great Cover Up—a documentary on the six-night, no-setlist, full-costume lovefest for live music at Kings—is premiering Aug. 21 on PBS NC.
It all started in 1999, when Kings co-founder Paul Siler and friends—touring musicians tired of the lack of indie-friendly venues—decided to open their own spot and throw a hurricane benefit. “A friend told us about this event where bands would dress up as a famous band and perform. We decided to make a curtain, not tell anybody who it was, and when the reveal happened, people just loved it,” Siler recalls. That two-night show is now a six-night festival with as many as 10 bands per night.
The rules? Learn a short set. Go all in on the costumes. Keep your band identity secret until the curtain drops. “The anticipation of who the next band is going to be is always fun,” muses Siler. “It’s an endless supply.”
Kings event manager Yvonne Chazal says the vibe is different from your typical dark-wall club. “We… know how to treat folks well… and the little things that make playing a show really comfortable,” she says. “We pride ourselves on throwing cool shows.”
Onstage, Siler emcees in his now-iconic ’70s-game-show-style jacket. Offstage, the Cover Up raises funds for multiple causes over the course of the week—past beneficiaries have included everything from the Red Cross to local soup kitchens.
The PBS NC documentary focuses on the people and the community that keep the tradition alive—longtime fans who’ve waited in line for decades, bands perfecting every note and wig flip, and even one first-time group prepping for their big reveal. For Siler, it’s a love letter to Raleigh: “It’s a cultural little slice of our city everybody gets excited about.” kingsraleigh.com
