The Ackland Art Museum is a museum and academic unit of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was founded through the bequest of William Hayes Ackland (1855–1940) to The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is located at 101 S. Columbia Street near the intersection of Franklin Street at the northern edge of campus.
It is free of charge to visitors and offers a wide selection of events related to exhibition, community, and university topics.
Monument to Balzac is a sculpture by Auguste Rodin in memory of the French novelist Honoré de Balzac. According to Rodin, the sculpture aims to portray the writer's persona rather than a physical likeness. The work was commissioned in 1891 by the Société des Gens de Lettres and a full-size plaster model was displayed in 1898 at a Salon in Champ de Mars. After coming under criticism the model was rejected by the Société and Rodin moved it to his home in Meudon. On 2 July 1939 (22 years after the sculptor's death) the model was cast in bronze for the first time and placed on the Boulevard du Montparnasse at the intersection with Boulevard Raspail.
Casts and various studies of the sculpture are today in many different collections including the Ackland Art Museum, Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum in Antwerp, The Norton Simon Museum of Art, the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, the Musée Rodin in Meudon, the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Hirschhorn Sculpture Garden (Smithsonian) in Washington D.C, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, in front of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands, in Caracas, Venezuela in the open spaces around the former Ateneo de Caracas, now UNEARTES and Balzac in the Robe of a Dominican Monk in Museo Soumaya in Mexico City. Today the artwork is sometimes considered the first truly modern sculpture.
William Hayes Ackland (born William H. Acklen, September 6, 1855 – February 16, 1940) was an American lawyer, writer, and art collector from Nashville, Tennessee. He lived most of his life away from Tennessee, in Washington, DC, and various social spots, traveling to England annually for its social season. The Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill was begun with his collection.
Franklin Street is a prominent thoroughfare in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Historic Franklin Street is considered the center of social life for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as the town of Chapel Hill.
It is home to numerous coffee shops, restaurants, museums, bookshops, music stores and bars. The street in downtown Chapel Hill is notable for its nightlife, culture, and regular festivities. The stretch of college-oriented businesses continues west into neighboring Carrboro, where the street's name changes to Main Street. Both streets are home to small music venues, like the Cat's Cradle and the Carrboro Arts Center, which were influential in the birth of Chapel Hill rock. UNC's Morehead Planetarium and Science Center, as well as the Ackland Art Museum, are also located in this area.