Salisbury art museum hosts exhibit featuring works by Picasso, Monet

The Waterworks Visual Arts Center in the small city of Salisbury is now home to an exhibit featuring works by European greats like Picasso and Monet. 

The exhibit, entitled Never Before Seen…Modern Masterpieces, features works by 28 European modernists and represents more than 100 years of art history. The pieces were part of the private collections of Salisbury native Julian Robertson, the late investor and philanthropist. 

The Robertson Family Foundation reached out to the Waterworks Visual Arts Center to ask about hosting the show last December, to the delight of Director Anne Scott Clement.

“Oh, my goodness, to have this quality of art here in Rowan County, especially for our locals, it's just fascinating to watch their eyes just widen and the children when they come in here and see it," she says. "For many of these people, it might be the only time they have an opportunity to see work of this quality, artists of note.”

Clement says they began working with the county’s public and private schools in the summer to coordinate field trips to the exhibit for nearly 20,000 students. It’s made things a lot busier for Waterworks. They won grants to hire new staff in order to host school groups every day until the end of the academic year.

The show has also boosted the museum’s overall visitor numbers. 

“We're suspecting that it will triple our attendance over this next year," Clement says. "To date, we've had folks from 32 states, and we've had them from England and as far away as Denmark and Canada.” 

The exhibit is free and open to the public Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. It will run through August 30, 2025.