Maya Freelon debuts immersive career retrospective at Gregg Museum of Art & Design
Maya Freelon, Bright Me, 2002. Acrylic on Paper archival print, 35"x45".
RALEIGH, NC.—
On Thursday, October 29, 2026, the Gregg Museum of Art & Design at North Carolina State University opens 2026 Artist-in-Residence Maya Freelon’s immersive exhibition Grounded. Freelon invites visitors on a journey through the Gregg Museum—a space shaped by the architectural influence of her father Phil Freelon, NC State College of Design alumnus, designer of the Gregg Museum’s contemporary building, and principal architect for the National Museum of African American History and Culture—and across two decades of her artistic practice.
On view through May 29, 2027, Grounded debuts Origination, a new site-specific installation, in dialogue with more than 20 works including photography, paintings, and vibrant, larger-than-life layered tissue paper sculptures spanning two decades of Freelon’s career. Through thematic sections that look both backward and forward, Grounded traces Freelon’s origins as a curious nine-year-old wanderer in her grandmother’s basement, where she first discovered water-stained tissue paper, to her present revelations as an award-winning visual artist and educator.
“Looking through the lens of the Gregg Museum’s space revealed recurring themes of transformation, loss, and healing across my artistic practice. The juxtaposition of these new immersive environments alongside artwork by my father, architect Phil Freelon, and great-grandfather, a pioneer African American Impressionist painter during the Harlem Renaissance, bring new meaning to this retrospective collection of my career,” said Freelon, who was raised in Durham, NC and previously taught at the College of Design. “Serving as the Gregg Museum’s Artist-in-Residence has made this experience especially meaningful, creating opportunities to engage with students, faculty, and community members through shared creative exploration.”
The season represents a new chapter for the Gregg Museum’s relaunched Artist-in-Residence program—one that places artists at the center of research, storytelling, teaching, and community engagement. Grounded joins three other exhibitions, collectively called Grounded at the Gregg, also offers oral histories, scientific inquiry, and artworks from the Gregg Museum’s permanent collection, connecting themes of land and ancestry through historical and community perspectives and inviting audiences to explore what it means to be “grounded” with the past, present and future. By weaving together art with scholarship across disciplines, the Grounded at the Gregg season demonstrates how a university museum can uniquely foster these conversations.
“At NC State, we have the ability to bring together artists, scholars, and students in ways that spark new possibilities for understanding ourselves and the world around us,” said Director Sara Segerlin, who joined the Gregg Museum in 2024 from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and The Momentary. “By connecting community histories, contemporary artistic practice, and interdisciplinary inquiry, this season honors the stories that brought us here while creating space for new discoveries. We hope visitors leave with a deeper understanding of the people and places that shape our world.”
In addition to Freelon’s Grounded, season highlights include Crafting Sanctuaries: Black Spaces of the Great Depression South organized by Art Bridges Foundation and curated by Tamir Williams, PhD, featuring rarely seen photographs of the private homes and communal spaces of Black Southerners in the 1930s and 40s; Community Stories: Sustaining North Carolina Black Heritage explores dignity, belonging, and imagination within North Carolina’s Black communities in collaboration with NC State Associate Professor Ajamu Dillahunt-Holloway, local partners, NC State students, and the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission; and Grounded companion exhibition You Are Here: Geolocating the Self through the Familiar in the Midst of the Unfamiliar by ariana Farquharson, Freelon’s former teaching assistant and College of Design faculty member at NC State, on view at NC State’s African American Cultural Center.
