New Bechtler Museum of Modern Art opens in Charlotte, NC

New Bechtler Museum opens in Charlotte, NC

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art has opened in Charlotte.

The museum describes itself as the only museum dedicated to the exhibition of mid-20th-century modern art in the southeastern United States.

The museum is named after the family of Andreas Bechtler, a Charlotte resident and native of Switzerland who inherited and assembled a collection of more than 1,400 works.

The collection includes work by Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miro, Jean Tinguely, Max Ernst, Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder, Le Corbusier, Sol LeWitt, Edgar Degas, Nicolas de Stael, Barbara Hepworth and Picasso.

Some artists in the collection were friends of the late Hans and Bessie Bechtler, who started the collection in the 1940s, and their son Andreas.

The museum building is a square terra cotta tile-covered box with a cantilevered fourth-floor gallery hanging over a plaza with a column in the middle. An interior atrium that creates a light-filled space inside.

The Bechtler Museum of Modern, which opened Jan. 2, is one of several cultural facilities on Charlotte’s South Tryon Street corridor, including the Knight Theater, the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, and the Mint Museum Uptown (opening fall 2010).

The Bechtler is open Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sundays, noon-5 p.m.; closed Tuesdays. Admission is $8 for adults; $6 for seniors, college students and educators; $4 for youth (11 to 14) and free for children (up to 10). For museum details visit www.bechtler.org.