How a small NC town landed a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ exhibit with Picasso & Monet
Inside the art gallery, the chatter among a group of students quiets as they take seats on cushioned wooden benches.
“Look around the room. Those are four Picassos,” Jenny Hubbard, Waterworks Visual Arts Center gallery attendant, said Tuesday to the Hanford-Doyle Elementary School fifth-graders.
Normally, Hubbard said, Pablo Picasso paintings hang in museums in metro cities like New York City and Washington D.C., or Paris. Or in Spain, where he was from.
“We’ve never had a Picasso hanging in Salisbury, North Carolina,” Hubbard said. “We’re lucky to have them here.”
Waterworks’ two-story nonprofit art museum is in a brick building on Liberty Street in downtown Salisbury. The Rowan County town has less than 36,000 residents. It’s nearly 43 miles northeast of Charlotte, which saw its own rare Picasso exhibition at the Mint Museum Uptown last year with 40 landscape pieces from public and private collections around the world.
Waterworks’ “Never Before Seen ... Modern Masterpieces” exhibition includes 38 paintings and two sculptures. It’s the first time any of the 28 modern artists that span 100 years of art history are on exhibit at the 65-year-old arts center, Waterworks Executive Director Anne Scott Clement told The Charlotte Observer during a tour.
Along with Picasso, works from French impressionism to abstract expressionism include Claude Monet, Camillle Pissarro and Henri Fantin-Latour.
“It’s a once-in-a-life opportunity for Salisbury and probably a once-in-a-life opportunity for many children and families in our community to ever be able to see something quite like this,” Clement said.
And the exhibit is free to the public.
“We wanted everybody to have an opportunity to come see this show,” Clement said. “We don’t want there to be any barriers for people to come here and enjoy what we have to offer.”
How a Salisbury gallery landed ‘Modern Masterpieces’
Last December, Clement was taking a Zoom meeting with The Robertson Foundation in New York City.
The foundation was founded by billionaire investor Julian Robertson and his wife Josie, who died in 2010. Julian Robertson, a Salisbury native who co-founded one of the world’s largest hedge funds Tiger Management, died at age 90 in 2022.
The Robertsons bequeathed part of their art collection to The Robertson Foundation. Last year, the Robertsons also donated five modernist works of art to The North Carolina Museum of Art, including the museum’s first Pablo Picasso “Seated Woman, Red and Yellow Background.”
“I thought they were calling to inquire about how to put a traveling art show together,” Clement said. Instead, she learned they wanted the exhibit to debut at Waterworks.
“My whole world was spinning. It took a minute for it to sink in,” Clement said. “I wasn’t expecting that to be part of the conversation.”
While exhibits typically take 18 to 24 months to plan, this one came together in nine months. The nearly yearlong show opened in September and runs through Aug. 30.
“I knew that the Robertsons had amassed a very exceptional collection, but I had no idea what all was in it until we started talking about having the show come here,” Clement said.
Inside the exhibition
The two sculptures by George Rickey and Marino Marini sit in the hallway across from Waterworks’ largest gallery.
Inside the Novell Gallery, 38 paintings hang on all four white walls. The exhibition is divided by subject — portraits, landscapes, still life and abstraction, Clement said.
Originally the show was going to have 25 pieces from The Robertson Foundation but the Robertson family added more pieces.
“Never Before Seen” spans 100 years of modern art with the oldest piece “La Seine à Argenteuil,” 1877 by Claude Monet to “Abstraktes Bild” 1989 by Gerhard Richter. Richter, 94, is the only living artist in the exhibition.
The paintings are hung similarly to the way the Robertson’s displayed them in the couple’s New York home, floor to ceiling, Clement said. “All of this beautiful artwork surrounded them day in and day out,” she said.
Waterworks and The Robertson Foundation officials declined to discuss the total value of the collection.
The Roberts also bequeathed 15 pieces valued at $190 million in 2022 to the Auckland Art Gallery in New Zealand. Artists in the collection include Picasso and Salvador Dali to Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin.
The Robertson Foundation is still finalizing details about where “Never Before Seen” exhibit will head to after Salisbury, officials said.
What the exhibit means for Waterworks and the region
Waterworks usually showcases living contemporary artists, Clements said.
“For us to have these historically famous artworks in our care is just extraordinary not only for our community, but our whole region,” she said. “This is extremely rare to have these masterpieces in Salisbury.”
Colorful banners for the exhibition hang on light posts throughout downtown. The town has been supportive, Clement said, from government and school officials to law enforcement and other organizations.
“Many hands have fed into this wonderful opportunity here,” Clement said.
Like Charlotte’s record-breaking Picasso exhibit that saw nearly 70,000 people over 14 weeks, Clement expects to see triple to quadruple the annual average of 24,000 a year.
Over nine weeks since the exhibition opened, Waterworks has seen about 1,000 visitors a month — not including student tours — from 32 states and as far away as Denmark and England, Clement said.
“I think it gives us an opportunity to use this as a springboard for the future of things to come,” she said.
‘True Artists’
Turning to a Picasso, Waterworks’ docent Hubbard asks the students what they see in the black-and-white oil portrait she said was a portrait of his wife with himself intertwined. “What does it mean?” she asked.
Several students had their theories, including Carson Deal, 11. “It seems like he liked her a lot. The two are connected,” he said.
Hubbard later asks the students to stand near their favorite painting.
Many jumped in front of Monet and Paul Signac’s “Port-en-Bessin — Les rochers du Calvados,” 1883. “Impressionists, like Monet, capture a particular moment in an ordinary day,” Hubbard had explained.
Jayden Lowe, 10, chose Richter for the “emotion” captured in the abstract.
In front of the Picassos, Langston Riley, 10, stood alone. He liked the “Tete d’femme (La femme qui pleure) 1943 pointing out the details — “a bunch of different eyes in a triangle” and a “cowboy hat.”
Deal was awed by the paintings.
“They’re great,” he said. “Whoever did these did a really great job on them. They are true artists.”
Clement, a fan of traditional works, says she enjoys just sitting in the gallery and taking it all in.
“Hopefully, one day they(‘ll) say I got to see a Picasso when I was in elementary school. How cool is that?” she said.
Want to go?
What: “Never Before Seen ... Modern Masterpieces” on exhibit through Aug. 30, 2025.
Where: Waterworks Visual Arts Center, 123 E. Liberty St., Salisbury
Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday. Guided and self-guided tours available.
Admission: Free. $10 donation recommended.
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This story was originally published November 21, 2024 at 5:00 AM with the headline "How a small NC town landed a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ exhibit with Picasso & Monet."