Summer Reading

Excitement on the loading dock this afternoon! Our long delayed shipment of Bull City Summer books arrived - from the printer in China. 

It was worth the wait. This is a high quality edition from Daylight Books in Hillsborough. They specialize in photography books, and their expertise is evident in this volume.

If you pre-ordered the book last year, it's finally available for pick-up at the Ballpark Corner Store. Thanks for your patience. Otherwise, you can purchase BCS for $49.95, and enjoy the book's 200 pages of photography and prose - a chronicle of 2013 in the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.

This is the companion book for the BCS exhibition at the NC Museum of Art. The show expands to additional venues in May - Raleigh's Contemporary Art Museum and the Crowe Lobby Gallery on the American Tobacco Campus in Durham.

This project was really an artistic experiment from the start.  Only thirteen months ago none of the documentary materials in this book even existed:  None of the photographs had been made nor the writing done.  I'm grateful to the dedicated artists on our team, to Daylight Books, to our partnering museums NCMA and CAM Raleigh, and especially to our sponsors - Triangle Orthopaedics, Capitol Broadcasting, the Bulls, and Baker Roofing - for believing this was possible and helping make it happen.

Sam Stephenson, Director

Bull City Summer

Revisiting Rockwell

I was fortunate to get a preview of the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the NC Museum of Art a couple of weeks ago. A group from the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce attended thanks to our host, the Association for Corporate Growth.

Art snobs consider Norman Rockwell a kitschy illustrator, but history will likely judge him a great American realist painter. OK, what do I know about art!?! But we boomers (and our parents...and their parents) grew up with Rockwell’s magazine covers.

The NCMA exhibit includes over 300 Saturday Evening Post covers spanning forty-seven years. That’s a lot to take in. To navigate five decades, my wife and I would pick significant family milestones (birthdays & wedding anniversaries) and find the corresponding covers. Those framed covers frame history in a poignant way.

Rockwell took a personal interest in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and that’s another aspect of the exhibit. The night after our museum visit, Katie Couric did a story on one of the Rockwell paintings for the CBS Evening News.

What interested me the most? It should be obvious...



The Rockwell exhibition runs through January 30th. Work it into your calendar over the holidays!

Opening Day...for the arts

There’s more to life than baseball, and I must post a few words about the NC Museum of Art. NCMA’s new 127,000 square foot expansion opens to the public this weekend. It’s an incredible transformation. (I’ve been fortunate enough to get a couple of sneak previews.)


The galleries, gardens, new acquisitions, the overall presentation…they are stunning. The new building is as much a testament to imagination and creativity as is the museum’s content.

Some of us fondly refer to our community as Mayberry. Our sense of place is somewhat understated compared to our million plus population, but Andy, Aunt Bee and Opie are in agreement: WE HAVE A WORLD CLASS MUSEUM!

Congratulations to Museum Director Larry Wheeler. He’s a visionary and NC’s impresario of the arts. Regarding the latter, he’s no art snob. Larry has a special knack for art interpretation and accessibility. He understands how to connect regular folks with art.

…so join us this summer for a ball game, and be sure to put a visit to the NC Museum of Art on your itinerary. The DBAP and the NCMA are a mere 20 miles/24 minutes apart, per Google maps.

Meanwhile, I suggest that you spend some time on the NCMA’s web site. Take a virtual tour. And check out the special coverage - video, slideshows, stories - at wral.com.