The museum's architectural design is 'interesting'. It has undergone many additions and renovations since it opened in 1983**.
**Blue Ridge Road and the Stone Building
In 1967, the present-day Blue Ridge Road site was chosen as the location for a new building, as the museum had outgrown the Morgan Street location. Designed by Edward Durrell Stone and Associates of New York and Holloway-Reeves Architects of North Carolina, the new building opened in 1983, under the directorship of Edgar Peters Bowron (1981-1985). Stone used spatial experimentation with pure geometric form for the museum by using a square as a basic unit and designing the entire site by manipulating the square form. This was Stone's last major design prior to his death. After he died in 1978, the exterior was changed from white marble to red brick.[5]