Students visiting the campus will begin their visit here in the Thomas J. Pearsall Jr. Building. Housing a state-of-the-art admissions and financial aid center, the Pearsall Building also is the home of the Four Sisters Art Gallery, containing pieces from the Robert Lynch Collection of Outsider Art, the College’s Pre-Columbian Art Collection, and occasionally other exhibits.
The Robert Lynch Collection of Outsider Art was purchased by Wesleyan in 1987 and consists of a variety of pieces of folk art created by artists from Eastern North Carolina. The collection was the vision of Robert Lynch, a Native American born into the Haliwa-Siponi community of neighboring Halifax County who went on to become a Harvard educated, Wall Street attorney. Lynch’s true love, however, was art and poetry and it was toward these pursuits that he devoted a good part of his life before his death in 1989.
The Wesleyan Collection of Pre-Columbian Art contains 1,622 prehistoric artifacts from Andean South America, Central America, Mesoamerica, the Southwestern United States, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska and Eastern North America. Another part of this vast collection is displayed in the Elizabeth Braswell Pearsall Library. Artifacts in the collection were donated by the Wesleyan Archaeological Society.
On exhibit until February 25, 2000 is Southern Women Painters (1880-1940), selected from the Collection of A. Everette James, Jr. and Nancy Jane Farmer.