Cornell Watson: God’s Country | Peel Gallery Carrboro | Through October 5
This show is closing soon, but it’s not one to miss. Watson is one of North Carolina’s most gifted photojournalists—you may have spotted his award-winning work in places like The New York Times (and in The Assembly’s stories, where Watson often freelances) and other national magazines. In God’s Country, Watson assembles photographs of charged moments that he’s captured from the past decade, from Black Lives Matter protests to Trump rallies, in a powerful portfolio that asks what it means when we call the United States “God’s country.”
Watson, a preacher’s son who grew up in the church, isn’t afraid to ask the hard questions, as in his artist statement for the show, where he states: “The photographs in this exhibition form an archive of my own seeing over the past five years. They are fragments of the contradictions I’ve witnessed: how we proclaim love for our neighbor while deporting them; how we honor the poor in scripture while criminalizing the unhoused; how we speak of liberty while upholding systems that deny it.”
Southern Grammar | Ella West Gallery, Durham | Through November 15
Everything is bigger in Texas, and in Jeremy Biggers’s series, Defiant, the Dallas artist calls on Black viewers to not be afraid to fill that or any other space: “For hundreds of years Black Americans have been asked to shrink ourselves and take up as little space as possible in an attempt to make others around us more comfortable,” he writes on his website.
In Southern Grammar, Biggers’s arresting oil paintings are featured alongside works by fellow Texan Sam Lao, a playful multidisciplinary artist; Raleigh artist Clarence Heyward; and mixed-media artist Jō Baskerville, who is from Georgia. Together, this group exhibit “explores the legacy, evolution, and unapologetic spirit of the Black South through powerful visual storytelling.”
In Search of Thoreau’s Flowers | The Gregg Museum of Art, Raleigh | Through January 31, 2026
The title of this exhibit isn’t theoretical: the materials it works with are the actual flowers of 19th-century naturalist and writer Henry David Thoreau, who preserved hundreds of pressed plants while living at Walden Pond, which have miraculously made it to this century.
Here, 648 specimens from Thoreau’s herbarium are digitized and recast in an immersive installation that considers the impact of climate change.
According to the exhibit website, an estimated “30 percent of plant species from Thoreau’s records have gone locally extinct, and another 35 percent are close to the same fate.”
Here is a chance to experience and appreciate these lost species; this being NC State University, the exhibition is also accompanied by numerous interdisciplinary opportunities to learn about the flowers. Visit the museum website for a full list of events.
Behind the Lens of America: Parallel Visions | UNC’s Wilson Library, Chapel Hill | Through April 30, 2026
Roland L. Freeman began his photography career after attending the 1963 March on Washington. Then in his twenties, he said he was inspired to document the “times in which I was living,” a commitment that he’s maintained ever since, chronicling the Black experience in communities all across the South.
Raleigh photojournalist Burk Uzzle began his career a few years prior to Freeman’s and likewise set about capturing landmark American moments, from the midcentury into today. In this exhibit put on by the University Libraries at UNC-Chapel Hill—which houses archives of both photographers—these two seminal bodies of work can be witnessed side by side.
Stop by Cornell Watson’s exhibition at Peel Gallery, after seeing Parallel Visions, to continue this overview of photojournalism and social movements. Wilson Library is open to the public during business hours, and Behind the Lens of America: Parallel Visions is located in the Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room and the North Carolina Collection Gallery.
more from the indy fall arts issue
Everything Now All at Once | The Nasher Museum of Art, Durham | Through July 26, 2026
The Nasher Museum of Art turns 20 this year. Everything Now All at Once, a colorful showcase of the museum’s contemporary collection—with a title that seems to riff off the 2022 multiverse thriller, Everything Everywhere All at Once—seems a fitting tribute for the anniversary, highlighting the museum’s forward-looking approach and featuring cutting-edge artists the museum has forged relationships with, including Sherrill Roland, Sam Gilliam, and Amy Sherald.
The Nasher currently has another exhibition drawn from its collection, Coming into Focus, centered on photography, on view through January 4. Both exhibits flex the power of curation and show how works of art can sharpen and transform, depending on the context they are placed in. With a permanent collection many thousands of works strong, the Nasher really does have a curatorial multiverse of sorts. Visit after October 18 and you’ll be able to enjoy the museum’s brand-new sculpture garden, too.
Follow Culture Editor Sarah Edwards on Bluesky or email [email protected].