North Carolina Museum of Art: The Miracle on Morgan Street

When the North Carolina Museum of Art opened in nineteen fifty-six, it made history: it was the first major art museum collection in the United States to be created through a state legislative appropriation. North Carolina set aside one million dollars in nineteen forty-seven, the first time any state had used public funds to build an art collection, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation matched it with dozens of works of art, primarily Italian Renaissance paintings.

Local reporters called it the Miracle on Morgan Street, because the museum opened in a converted state highway building in downtown Raleigh. The founding collection was outsized for a Southern state capital, and included works that came directly from the Kress gift to the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The museum has since moved to a larger campus and added a notable outdoor sculpture park. It remains the model for what a state government can do when it decides art belongs to everyone.