GREENSBORO, NC.- The Weatherspoon Art Museum at UNC Greensboro announced today that it will receive a landmark gift from artist, collector, and philanthropist Carol Cole Levin to transform the museum’s first-floor wing into the Cole Levin Center for Art and Human Understanding. This major gift of close to $5 million comprises artwork from her extensive collection as well as funding for building renovations and programming. The Cole Levin Center will place humanist inquiry at the core of the museum’s mission to be a resource for object-based teaching and learning that extends throughout the university and into the community.
This gift is part of UNCG’s transformative Light the Way: The Campaign for Earned Achievement, which seeks to raise more than $200 million to increase access, elevate academic excellence, and enhance the impact of UNCG’s programs. The Weatherspoon Art Museum has already exceeded its $20 million campaign goal, with just over a year remaining in the campaign.
The Center’s emphasis on better understanding our shared humanity will grow out of Carol’s own artmaking and collecting. Since the 1970s, she has made work that addresses human vulnerability, nurture, and care while building a collection of works by artists who do the same. As part of her gift to the Weatherspoon, some 270 of these artworks by more than 140 artists—including works she created—will become part of the museum’s collection, enabling broader and more direct conversations about what it means to be human, to know ourselves, and to understand each other.
Upon its completion, the Center will comprise teaching, study, and exhibition spaces that will expand the museum’s capacity to offer students, faculty, and community members rich opportunities to learn together with original works of art. Object-study spaces will allow the Weatherspoon to host several classes at a time, including for asynchronous and repeat visits. The Center will also offer robust programming designed to engage learners from across diverse fields of study in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences.
A native of Mississippi who moved to North Carolina in the 1980s, Carol makes art informed by her experiences of the South, 1970s feminism, and past struggles with mental health. Workshops with artists Lynda Benglis, Judy Chicago, and Ida Kohlmeyer inspired much of her early work, and she speaks frequently of the importance of their mentorship. Her gift to the Weatherspoon includes works by these mentors as well as younger generations of artists. Highlights include early works by Willie Cole, David Huffman, Pepón Osorio, Joyce J. Scott, Saya Woolfalk, and Gil Yefman, among others, as well as objects specifically tied to Southern history, literature, and culture—including works by Walter Anderson, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Eudora Welty, and Tennessee Williams. The Cole Levin Center for Art and Human Understanding is jointly named in tribute to Carol’s late husband, Seymour Levin.
Carol’s ties to the Weatherspoon Art Museum and UNC Greensboro run deep. As a longstanding member and former president of the museum’s advisory board, she has championed the Weatherspoon’s work on campus and in the community for many years. Through gifts of art and funding to support students’ engagement with visiting artists and curators, she has demonstrated her belief in the power of art to impact lives.
“The Weatherspoon Art Museum has meant so much to me living in Greensboro,” says Carol, “and bringing artists from the bigger art world to speak to students is all part of my mission too. The collection at the Weatherspoon is something to be proud of, and I feel like the museum will be a good home for so many of the artworks from my own collection. And if they inspire students and visitors from the community to accept and be who they are, I will be forever grateful.”
"Carol’s gift will have a transformative effect on the Weatherspoon and UNC Greensboro," notes Chancellor Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr. “The museum anticipates that the Cole Levin Center will nearly double its capacity to engage students with essential skills for effective communication, problem solving, creativity, and empathy as they prepare to contribute meaningfully to a global society.” The Cole Levin Center will profoundly impact the students of UNC Greensboro, who make up one of the most diverse institutions in the UNC System. Fifty percent of UNC Greensboro students self-identify as the first of their families to attend college, 53 percent are people of color, and 46 percent are Pell Grant recipients. Importantly, the school is ranked #1 in North Carolina for social mobility and serves significant numbers of returning adult and veteran students. For many in this broad student body, the Weatherspoon provides their first art museum experience.
“The Cole Levin Center at the Weatherspoon Art Museum aligns with UNC Greensboro’s mission to foster inclusive excellence and community engagement, ensuring that our diverse student body and the greater community will have unprecedented space for learning about ourselves and making sense of the world through engagement with art,” remarks Juliette Bianco, the museum’s Anne and Ben Cone Memorial Endowed Director. “We are profoundly grateful to Carol and honored to expand the museum’s collection with works of art that will impact how we think and talk about personal and collective experience and forging deep human connections for generations to come.”
In Spring 2025, UNC Greensboro students will curate an exhibition involving works promised in Carol’s gift to celebrate the forthcoming creation of the Center. The Cole Levin Center for Art and Human Understanding will open in 2026.
