Art Changes Everything: The Peck Effect

When Carolina alumnus Sheldon Peck and his wife, Leena, gave a rare collection of 17^th-century European masterworks — including seven Rembrandts — to the Ackland Art Museum, it became the nation’s first public university art museum to own a collection of Rembrandt drawings and one of only two universities to do so.

For the Pecks, the gift was more about sharing the pleasure and awe these works inspire, especially with Carolina’s students.

That’s precisely why Tatiana String, Associate Professor of Renaissance Art History in UNC’s Department of Art and Art History, refocused her research seminar, “The Art of Drawing in the 17th Century,” to a study of the Peck Collection.

“When the Peck gift was announced, I was thrilled and moved,” String said. “I focused my course on it immediately; what an amazing opportunity to expose my students to truly great and poignant art.”

Read the complete Carolina Story…

This is story number 71 in the Carolina Stories 225th Anniversary Edition magazine.

Related Stories

Celebrating a Presidential Day

The Storytelling of Art

Communicating Carolina’s Excellence through Art