North Carolina State University. If you’re still feeling spry (you’ve walked ten miles), you can carry on through the forest a ways, although the trail will overshoot your preferred exit spot; you’ll have to double back east a short distance on the road that runs along Schenck’s southern boundary. Otherwise, keep on the paved walkway that parallels Reedy Creek Road. You pass a horse farm, and then Prairie Ridge Ecostation, a wildlife learning center run by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Nature is giving way again to civilization. You cross underneath Edwards Mill Road, past a North Carolina National Guard facility and the N.C. State textbook warehouse— and then Reedy Creek Road T’s off into Blue Ridge Road. You’re here– you’ve reached the North Carolina Museum of Art. You may want to stay on the greenway and pass among the museum’s outdoor installations: the giant whirligig; the series of rings, huge as loop-de-loops; Ledelle Moe’s colossal Collapse I, like a toppled ancient god. Enter the West Building. Admission is free. Head straight for the contemporary art section, past the Motherwells, the Kirchners, and take a much-needed seat on the bench before Alex Katz’s monumental, coolly transfixing Six Women. It’s nice to be in the company of these women after a walk in solitude. The painting is as big as a movie screen, and it looks like a still from a movie– a sort of psychological comedy, taut and mysterious, its characters alluring and complex; the cinematography and framing are intimate and precise and the color is strong, arresting. This is a painting you can lose yourself in. You may find it so transporting that it no longer matters how you’re going to get home. L
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