故事
William Hayes Ackland, a wealthy Nashville lawyer and collector, wanted to fund an art museum on one firm condition: that he be buried inside it, beneath a carved effigy of himself. Duke University turned the offer down rather than keep a tomb in its lobby, and after years of lawsuits the money and the body went instead to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
So the Ackland Art Museum, opened in 1958, really does hold its founder. Ackland lies in a marble tomb just off the entrance, watching over a collection he never lived to assemble.
Around him is an encyclopedic university museum of some 21,000 works, strong in Asian art, European old masters, prints and drawings and North Carolina pottery, used for teaching across the campus.
