North Carolina Museum of Art to Present Nancy Baker Cahill’s ‘Ecologies of Scale’

The North Carolina Museum of Art will open "Nancy Baker Cahill: Ecologies of Scale" on September 26, bringing together immersive videos, sculptures, works on paper and augmented-reality projects by the Los Angeles-based artist across the museum's galleries and Museum Park in Raleigh. The exhibition will remain on view through January 31, 2027.

Organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art, the exhibition will occupy East Building, Level B, in Gallery 1, the Julian T. Baker Jr. Gallery, and Gallery 2, the Allen G. Thomas Jr. Gallery. Its presentation extends beyond the interior galleries into the museum's outdoor grounds, reflecting Baker Cahill's combination of analog and digital media and her interest in the relationship between natural and technological environments.

Baker Cahill's practice uses immersive experiences, video installations, sculpture, works on paper and augmented reality to examine environmental and cultural instability, as well as ideas of interconnectedness and interdependence. According to the museum, her work also investigates how technology mediates human experience, cognition and perception, bringing natural and digital worlds into the same field of attention.

A central outdoor component will be "Substrate", a monumental augmented-reality artwork located in the Ellipse in Museum Park. Visitors will be able to view and interact with the work using a free app on a smartphone or tablet. The project invites participants to add personally relevant cultural artifacts, including artworks, films, books, poems and songs, to what the museum describes as a living archive. The museum identifies the work as "Substrate", 2025, interactive augmented reality, dimensions variable, commissioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Art + Technology Lab.

The exhibition is also tied to a separate one-night presentation on Thursday, November 5. During NCMA After Hours, which runs from 5:30 to 9:30 pm and is free to attend, a selection of Baker Cahill's monumental immersive videos will be projected onto the facade of the museum's West Building from Gipson Plaza. The museum lists the evening as a celebration of new installations by Baker Cahill and Ronny Quevedo, with live music and hands-on activities across the campus.

Additional programmes scheduled around the exhibition include "Mindful Museum: Fall Meditative Moments with Art" on Wednesday, October 7 from 6 to 7 pm in East Building, ticketed at 18 dollars general admission and 16 dollars for members and open to ages 16 and up; a free talk by Baker Cahill, "Perceiving Otherwise: Ecological Imagination and Experiential Practice in Polycrisis", on Friday, November 6 from noon to 1 pm in the East Building's SECU Auditorium, which requires registration; and "Pop-Up Art with Nancy Baker Cahill" in Museum Park on Saturday, November 7 from noon to 3 pm, free and for all ages. In the talk, the museum says, the artist will discuss projects from her research-based practice that ask how expanded forms of perception might foster empathy, collective awareness and mutual responsibility, and will address the technological and biological systems that shape perception.

"Nancy Baker Cahill: Ecologies of Scale" is supported by the Hartfield Foundation and Libby and Lee Buck, with additional support from the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation, Inc., and the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment for Educational Exhibitions. Research for the exhibition was made possible by the Ann and Jim Goodnight / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fund for Curatorial and Conservation Research and Travel.