Welcome to Durham, Duke

The Nasher Museum of Art opened this past weekend with well-deserved fanfare; it is a magnificent space, and a wonderful showcase for the art contained within. Much ado has been made about the beauty of the site as well, of the sculpturesuqe building in the garden. However, the museum site is a bold choice for another reason - a tentative step by the university towards the community around it.

While the road known as Duke University Road/Chapel Hill St. is the front entrance to Duke’s West Campus, one would hardly know it by the unassuming stone gateway. I frequently see my own experience of 20 years ago repeated by prospective students and parents – driving confusedly along Duke University Road, thinking that such a mild front entrance could not possibly be the gateway to a major university.

Duke has vigilantly maintained its separation from the primary corridor linking West Campus to downtown. The last unabashed tie to the road that runs in front of its campus was likely the grand Duke mansion, ‘Four Acres’ - disposed of by the university in 1964, and razed to make way for the N.C. Mutual Building. Until the recent renovation of the Hart House to the house of the university president and the Nasher Museum, Duke had turned a blind eye to its namesake road.

Which isn’t to say that Duke hasn’t been busy building new buildings. The spires, pointed arches, and stony walls seem to go up as fast as the rock can be quarried. Yet when it comes to land use, Duke solidly maintains its classic involuted posture, building towards the center rather than the world around it. The stereotypic Duke student who has never been to Durham has fortunately become increasingly apocryphal as Durham offers more for those students to do. However, often function does follow form, and the form has always discouraged students from finding out what lies beyond the trees.

The story goes that Mr. Nasher insisted on the location for the new art museum. I don’t doubt that to be true. I am quite sure that, given the choice, Duke would have located the new museum somewhere deep within the Duke campus, on some patch of forest beyond the science buildings and athletic buildings. A glance at the campus master plans is telling. The Duke University Road corridor is designated for “Open Space” and “Conservation”. While I am surely in favor of such concepts, it seems odd that one of the city’s primary axes, connecting the front entrance of Duke University and the center of downtown, should be designated as a buffer.

I am therefore grateful to Duke for locating the museum where it now stands. There is a palpable sense that the museum belongs to us all, as a community, which I believe to be almost entirely due to its location. Mind you, Duke still couldn’t resist a bit of the inward gaze; the pedestrian entrances are from Campus Drive, and the back of the building (which, on a modernist structure, can be gleaned from the location of the dumpsters) is oriented towards Duke University Road.

But I shouldn’t quibble. As a Duke alumnus who lives and breathes things Durham, yet sometimes forgets that Duke-as-place is anywhere nearby, I extend my congratulations and welcome.