Emily Kass was jazzed about plans to expand the Ackland Art Museum when she arrived a year ago as its director. But with the new 38,000-square-foot wing years away, Kass saw no reason to keep stewing in the cramped galleries on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus.

This month, visitors will see the results of her initiative at what's billed as the "New Ackland." The staff spent the summer overhauling the interior space of the 36,000-square-foot museum in the first total reinstallation of the galleries since 1990. Today marks the opening of "Spirit of the Brush: Chinese Calligraphy and Painting," the first of four new exhibitions that will be unveiled this month.

Here's what the renovation means:

-- Three large galleries and three small ones for temporary exhibitions will give the museum more space to change what's on display.

-- Important pieces in the permanent collection that have been in storage for years will be put on view. More works will be rotated from storage into the galleries more often.

-- A new European art gallery will showcase the museum's collection of Western art, including a 44,-inch bronze cast of Auguste Rodin's "The Call to Arms" and a 7-inch cast of the head for his Balzac monument.

-- The evolution of Western art will continue in the new neighboring modern and contemporary gallery. The space used to hold only 16th- and 17th century works.

-- Renaissance and baroque art will be moved into a new early modern European gallery. Several pieces loaned by the N.C. Museum of Art will be on display there.

-- The Yeager Gallery, which holds the museum's Asian art collection, is in the same place but it has been redesigned. It will include light-sensitive works, such as paper scrolls, that have been displayed only rarely.

-- The African gallery will move downstairs from the second floor.

-- The South Asian art gallery will feature pieces on permanent display for the first time in years, including a 12th-century sculpture.

-- Art and the Natural World is a new gallery space that will examine the Renaissance-era environment and the beginnings of science.

The Ackland, built in 1958 on South Columbia Street near the intersection with East Franklin, is part of Chapel Hill's 2nd Friday Artwalk. This week's event features the opening of "The Healing Arts: Sickness and Social Impact" and "Enlightened Patronage: Art in Service to Humanity." On Sept. 30, "The Art of Looking: Selections From the Collection of Charles Millard." Millard was the Ackland director who oversaw the 1990 reinstallation.

Admission is free.

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