by Catherine Frank

The mission statement for the Ackland Art Museum is delightfully simple and ambitious: "The Ackland Art Museum exists to bring people and works of art together."

People and art indeed do come together behind the imposing façade of the red brick building that faces South Columbia Street.

On any given day, one can see an elementary school class from Durham hovering over Korean artist Do-Ho Suh’s large "Floor," an interactive installation made up of 18,000 miniature figures. UNC freshman composition students look for the symbolism of religion, race and gender in Archibald J. Motley’s 1924 "Mending Socks." Downtown workers take time during a lunch break to contemplate the sounds and sights of Helene Aylon’s "The Liberation of G-d, 1990-1996," an exploration of sacred texts that is a compelling part of the current exhibition "Five Artists Five Faiths."

Many of the Ackland’s exhibitions and the lectures accompanying them are subtitled "community dialogues." As curator for exhibitions, Barbara Matilsky believes that while exhibitions must provide something for the UNC academic community to "sink its teeth into," the residents of Chapel Hill, the Triangle and North Carolina also are encouraged to take advantage of this unique resource to get a "taste" of a collection made up of more than 15,000 objects.

Matilsky stresses the importance of seeing art as "functional," "a part of life" and not as something that should be limited to museums. She was drawn to the formal study of art after taking an aesthetics course in college in which the professor placed art within the history of ideas. Since then she has been committed to the study of art as a "way to learn about everything else." She was drawn to the Ackland by the rare opportunity to be part of the Five Faiths project, an initiative started in 1996 to use the Ackland’s collection, as Matilsky notes, to "foster understanding and non-confrontational dialogue in a community that is rapidly changing."

In curating exhibitions, Matilsky brings to bear her own vision of art as a way to learn about everything else and works with her many colleagues at the museum to find and follow the pulse of the community.

In the catalog "The Spirit of Place: Art, Environment, Community" for a 1998 exhibition of designs for modifying the "fortress-like façade and landscape" surrounding the Ackland, Matilsky wrote that when museums reach out to the community, they are able to "actively promote the powerful, transformative role of art in our society."

She curates exhibitions designed to remind viewers of the power of art to solve problems; by bringing people and art together, Matilsky hopes to revitalize a sense of art as a component of everyday life that has been lost for many people in our culture.

Matilsky notes that in the Triangle we are lucky to have an engaged and educated public that is willing to see the tough images that art can present. She organized the efforts to bring an exhibition of Sebastião Salgado’s photographs, "Migrations: Humanity in Change," to the Ackland. The photographs documenting the lives of displaced people in war-torn places drew more than 10,000 people to the museum in a two-month period, and the comments from viewers indicated that they had been moved and informed by images that forced them to confront unpleasant realities.

Matilsky says that such a response indicates that we have a unique community, concerned with those "other than themselves" and willing to reach out to others.

Matilsky is this month reaching out in a different venue and bringing people and art together by curating an exhibition of the work of the Horace Williams House art committee that will be on display at the Horace Williams House Oct. 31-Dec. 1. The eccentric 19th-century Horace Williams House, headquarters for the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill, provides a "frame" for art that is very different from the formal galleries and technically polished presentation of the Ackland. In many ways, however, the "adaptive re-use" of a professor’s home as a gallery "demystifies" art, takes it out of the traditional museum setting and makes it part of everyday life.

Local artists volunteer to select and curate the Horace Williams House shows, although they usually work behind the scenes without much public recognition or attention. When an invitational show scheduled for November fell through, committee members were encouraged to show their own work to exemplify the way various visions inform the selection of exhibitions at the house.

Visitors will see Elizabeth Aralia’s soft sculptures, Artie Dixon’s photographs of local figure Mr. Wright and of members of the local punk community, the fiber work of Peg Gignoux, collages by Kaola Phoenix and Anne W. Thomas, and paintings by Nerys Levy, Susan Rosefielde, and Carolyn Rugen.

Two members of the committee, Lynn Igoe and Moreton Neal, will highlight their writing about art and "everything else." The show is an eclectic mix and celebrates the work of people for whom art is an everyday exercise and who volunteer their time to bring art and people together.

Matilsky emphasizes through her work and writing that art must be part of a dialogue that enables us to find new ways of thinking about aesthetics, faith and social problems. Chapel Hill offers many opportunities for people and art to come together in a variety of frameworks for understanding the value and importance of art in our community. Take one of these opportunities. Who knows? You just may be prompted to learn about "everything else."

Catherine Frank is executive director of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill.