History and Mystery: Discoveries in the NCMA British Collection

History and Mystery showcases the best of the NCMA’s permanent collection of Old Master British paintings and sculpture from 1580 to 1850.

This exhibition is anchored by an extraordinary group of nine Elizabethan and Jacobean aristocratic portraits from about 1580 to 1620 that has been the focus of an ongoing research project involving the NCMA Conservation and Curatorial departments and students and faculty from UNC–Chapel Hill and Duke. The exhibition also provides the opportunity to reexamine familiar favorites in the collection from new perspectives and to display a few “hidden treasures” that have rarely—or never before—been on public view. 

History and Mystery is one in a series of permanent collection focus exhibitions highlighting the work of the NCMA's Conservation Department. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.