Ackland Director Katie Ziglar Quietly Slips Out, and a National Search Begins

Katie Ziglar is no longer the director of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Ackland Art Museum. The museum made the announcement in an August 27 press release introducing Carolyn Allmendinger, its longtime Director of Education and Interpretation, as interim director.

Ziglar received a bachelor’s degree in history from UNC in 1979. When she returned to helm the Ackland in 2016, she had three decades of museum experience; a UNC press release emphasized her prior fundraising efforts at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Important acquisitions during her tenure included the Peck Collection, which consists of 17th- and 18th-century Dutch and Fleming drawings, and Islamic art, drawing on her postgraduate work at the American University in Cairo.

The director of the Ackland is in charge of more than 20,000 works the museum owns, which curators rearrange from storage 10 to 12 times per year. Reading the many interviews Ziglar has given, the sense is that of someone most focused on the business side of running a museum, surprised but game to be back in Chapel Hill after working in bigger cities.

She’s had no glaring trouble at the Ackland unless you count the painting, stolen by Nazis in World War II, that had to be returned to a Jewish family earlier this year, but it had been there since the ’70s. A 2019 blog post from the Morehead-Cain Scholarship Fund, where Ziglar sat on the board, says she had a big goal to replace the Ackland’s building, built in the ’50s and last renovated in the ’80s, which hasn’t come to pass.

But Allmendinger’s letter praised Ziglar at length, specifically for overseeing a doubled budget and helping to raise $121 million in financial and art gifts.

“Katie led the Museum staff in raising the profile of the Ackland, rebranding the Museum, launching a new website, presenting a slate of high-profile exhibitions of art from across the globe, and making the Ackland more accessible and welcoming,” Allmendinger wrote.

Despite this warm send-off, there was something furtive about Ziglar’s departure. She could not be reached for comment, nor would the museum provide information on the circumstances beyond that she had “stepped down.”

The INDY first asked the university about the departure on August 9, more than two weeks before the public announcement, when her name had already been removed from the Ackland’s website.

It took a week to receive a statement from Beth Keith, Associate Vice Chancellor of University Communications: “Carolina remains steadfastly committed to the arts and the Ackland. That commitment includes a vision to expand our offerings for our students and our local community. We will have a national search to find the next director.”

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