The ancient New World, one of the illustrious cradles of human civilization, is featured at The Mint Museum. This wide-ranging collection showcases more than 2,500 artworks from the ancient Americas. The museum’s collection, the majority having been donated by Dr. and Mrs. Francis Robicsek, is one of the largest in the United States, spanning 4,300 years of artistic creativity from 2800 BCE to 1500 CE, and presenting more than forty of the major societies from ancient Mesoamerica (Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador), Central America (Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama), and Andean South America (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile).

Two galleries are dedicated to the arts of the ancient Americas at Mint Museum Randolph , exploring the works from two viewpoints. First, the objects are viewed as windows into the society that created them, borrowing the “material culture” approach from anthropology and archaeology. As such, artworks reveal a people’s daily routines, social practices, politics, intellectual accomplishments, and spiritual beliefs. The museum equally views these pieces as art–that is, manifestations of human creativity and technical expertise that highlight the universal impulse to produce well-crafted, emotion-filled objects. The aesthetics and creative techniques developed by the ancient artists of the Americas are equally explored in the galleries. These works–in earthenware, jadeite and other stones, gold and silver, shell, and fiber–personify and preserve these now-lost civilizations whose descendants are the foundations of the modern nations of Latin America.

Want to see more? Click below to begin exploring and be inspired by The Mint Museum’s permanent collection of American Art.

Online Resources

Mint Wiki
Created by The Mint Museum Library Mintwiki provides online information on the special exhibitions and permanent collections of The Mint Museum

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Perhaps more than any other art form, decorative arts have the remarkable power to connect with us almost instantaneously. We may not own a seventeenth-century Chinese teapot or a sideboard once owned by a North Carolina plantation owner, but we can view artifacts like those in the museum, and quickly associate them with objects of similar type or function in our own households. Perhaps the museum objects will even remind us of special occasions or daily routines in which our own possessions were utilized and enjoyed.

The Decorative Arts Collection at the Mint numbers over 12,500 objects, and includes fine furniture, silver, and glass. Its greatest strength, however, is in the field of ceramics. The museum has significant holdings in wares from England and continental Europe, as well as notable examples of American art pottery and Asian porcelain. The Mint also boasts the largest public collection of North Carolina ceramics in the country.

The Delhom Service League, a support affiliate of the Mint, sponsors the Potters Market Invitational each year to raise funds for the expansion of the decorative arts permanent collection. Find out more about the 14th annual Potters Market.

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The Special Collections of The Mint Museum Library and Archives encompass publications and materials ranging from the 17th century to the 21st century and are unique or rare items which have a particular importance to the museum, its history, and its object collections.

The Library Special Collections include scarce historical texts, limited edition artist’s books, first editions, and elaborately-bound special editions. Due to their scarcity, value, age, and many cases, fragility, they are kept separately from the books and journals in the library’s general collections.

The Mint Museum Archives is itself a special collection as its holdings are unique to this institution. The Archives includes documents, scrapbooks, photographs, videos, ephemera, and even objects, which tell the story of The Mint Museum in our community.

The Special Collections of The Mint Museum Library and Archives are hidden collections which we are delighted to bring to public view. Besides their own intrinsic value, items from the library and archives provide context for objects and artists in the museum’s object collections.

Various items from both the library and archives will be exhibited on a rotating basis at Mint Museum Randolph. For more information about The Mint Museum Library and Archives, visit their pages on this web site or even better, come visit!

Purchase Tickets

Interested in seeing more collections like this? Consider purchasing a ticket today to visit both of our museums.

Not a Mint Member?

Consider becoming a Mint Member.
Get early access to see exhibitions, attend member-only events, and more!