Claude Monet - Flowering Arches, Giverny

The Phoenix Art Museum is the largest museum for visual art in the

southwest United States The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that generally includes Arizona, New Mexico, and adjacent portions of California, Colorad ...

. Located in

Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1,608,139 residents as of 2020. It is the fifth-most populous city in the United States, and the on ...

, the museum is . It displays international exhibitions alongside its comprehensive collection of more than 18,000 works of American, Asian, European, Latin American, Western American, modern and contemporary art, and fashion design. A community center since 1959, it hosts festivals, live performances, independent art films and educational programs year-round. It also features ''The Hub: The James K. Ballinger Interactive Gallery,'' an interactive space for children; photography exhibitions through the museum's partnership with the Center for Creative Photography; the landscaped Sculpture Garden; dining and shopping. It has been designated a Phoenix Point of Pride.

History

Opened in 1959, the Phoenix Art Museum is located on the

Central Avenue Corridor The Central Avenue Corridor is a significant stretch of north–south Central Avenue in Phoenix, Arizona. Roughly bounded by Camelback Road to its north, and McDowell Road to its south, this is one of Phoenix's most vital and heavily trafficked ...

. Shortly after

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

became the 48th state in 1912, the Phoenix

Women's Club The woman's club movement was a social movement that took place throughout the United States that established the idea that women had a moral duty and responsibility to transform public policy. While women's organizations had always been a part ...

was formed and worked with the

Arizona State Fair The Arizona State Fair is an annual state fair, held at Arizona State Fairgrounds. It was first held in 1884, but has had various interruptions due to cotton crop failure, the Great Depression era, World War I & World War II years & the COVID-1 ...

Committee to develop a fine arts program. In 1915, the club purchased Carl Oscar Borg's painting ''Egyptian Evening'' for US$125 and presented it to the

city of Phoenix Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1,608,139 residents as of 2020. It is the fifth-most populous city in the United States, and the onl ...

to begin a community art collection. In 1925, the State Fair Committee expanded its community responsibilities and formed the Phoenix Fine Arts Association. The next major advance in the local art community came during 1936, when the Phoenix Art Center was created under the auspices of the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

's Federal Art Project. Its director was the painter Philip C. Curtis. Its success led to the creation in 1940 of the Civic Center Association, which set about raising funds and planning a building on a 6.5-acre plot donated by the heirs of Adolphus Clay Bartlett. These heirs included Maie Bartlett Heard, who with her husband Dwight B. Heard founded the Heard Museum. Art exhibit at Phoenix art museum

In the early 1950s, Alden Dow, an architect, was retained by the Board of Trustees to design a complex that would house the Phoenix Public Library, the Phoenix Little Theater (now the Phoenix Theatre) and the new Phoenix Art Museum. The structural engineering firm chosen for this project was Severud Associates. To coordinate this endeavor, the Phoenix Fine Arts Association named a new Board of Trustees in 1952 and the museum's first director, Forest M. Hinkhouse, in 1957. The museum opened on November 18, 1959, and was officially dedicated on November 21, 1959. Two years later, the board announced plans for an expansion, and in 1965 the museum was enlarged from to . Additional expansions, led by design architects

Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (also known as Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects , Partners) are a husband-and-wife architectural firm founded in 1986, based in New York. Williams and Tsien began working together in 1977. Their studio focu ...

of New York, occurred in 1996 and 2006. The museum more than doubled its size with new exhibition galleries, a 300-seat public theater, a research library, studio classroom facilities, the PhxArtKids Gallery, and a café. Most recently, in 2006, the museum saw the opening of the Ellen and Howard C. Katz Wing for Modern Art, the Heather and Michael Greenbaum Museum Lobby, an expanded museum store and the Bennett and Jacquie Dorrance Sculpture Garden. A new entrance from the north parking includes a cantilevered canopy, creating a large outdoor pavilion area. The museum's growth has been funded, in part, by successful City of Phoenix Bond Elections and a voter-approved bond. In the last 50 years, the museum has hosted more than 400 exhibitions from all over the world, grown the collection to more than 18,000 works of art, and been visited by millions.

Collections

Young couple looking at painting Phoenix Art museum

Artist Werner Segarra standing in front of one of his photographic works with reflections of museum guests in reflection

View of Phoenix Art museum outdoor garden area

Phoenix young couple looking at artwork at Phoenix Art museum

In addition to an annual calendar of exhibitions, the museum's permanent collection galleries are drawn from more than 19,000 works of American, Asian, European, Latin American, Western American, modern and contemporary art, and fashion design. Visitors also enjoy photography exhibitions through the museum's landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. The museum has European paintings by Ubertini, Girolamo Genga,

Guercino Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (February 8, 1591 – December 22, 1666),Miller, 1964 better known as Guercino, or il Guercino , was an Italian Baroque painter and draftsman from Cento in the Emilia region, who was active in Rome and Bologna. The vi ...

, Carlo Dolci,

Bernardo Strozzi Bernardo Strozzi, named il Cappuccino and il Prete Genovese (c. 1581 – 2 August 1644) was an Italian Baroque painter and engraver. A canvas and fresco artist, his wide subject range included history, allegorical, genre and portrait paintin ...

, Marcellus Coffermans,

Jacob Cornelisz Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (before 1470 – 1533) was a Northern Netherlandish designer of woodcuts and painter. He was one of the first important artists working in Amsterdam, at a time when it was a flourishing and beautiful provincial ...

, Master of Astorga, Bartolomeus Bruyn the Elder, Nicolas Lepicie, Giovanni Piazzetta, Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun,

Antoine Vestier Antoine Vestier (1740 – 24 December 1824) was a French miniaturist and painter of portraits, born at Avallon in Burgundy, who trained in the atelier of Jean-Baptiste Pierre. He showed his work at the Salon de la Correspondance, Paris, before ...

, George Romney, Camille Corot, Hippolyte Delpy,

Eugène Boudin Eugène Louis Boudin (; 12 July 18248 August 1898) was one of the first French landscape painters to paint outdoors. Boudin was a marine painter, and expert in the rendering of all that goes upon the sea and along its shores. His pastels, summary ...

Jean-Léon Gérôme Jean-Léon Gérôme (11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904) was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was "arguably the world's most famous living artist by 1880." The ra ...

(''Thumbs Down''),

Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. Durin ...

(''Garden Arches, Giverny''),

Max Beckmann Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920s ...

, Léon Portau, Eduard Villard, and

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

. It has American paintings by Gilbert Stuart, Sanford Gifford,

Robert Henri Robert Henri (; June 24, 1865 – July 12, 1929) was an American painter and teacher. As a young man, he studied in Paris, where he identified strongly with the Impressionists, and determined to lead an even more dramatic revolt against A ...

, Ernest Lawson,

Marsden Hartley Marsden Hartley (January 4, 1877 – September 2, 1943) was an American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist. Hartley developed his painting abilities by observing Cubist artists in Paris and Berlin. Early life and education Hartley was born ...

, Stuart Davis,

Georgia O'Keeffe Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American modernist artist. She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O'Keeffe has been called the "Mother of Ame ...

, Jonas Lie,

Lew Davis Louis Davis (July 16, 1884—January 13, 1948) was an American film actor. He appeared in over 75 films between 1916 and 1948. Career A New York native, Davis appeared in his first film in 1916. He began to achieve fame after arriving at Columb ...

, Ernest Blumenschein, Joseph Sharp, Howard Post, and Ed Mell. It has contemporary art by Yayoi Kusama (''You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies''), Viola Frey,

Donald Martiny Donald Martiny (born 1953 in Schenectady, New York) is an American artist. His abstract paintings are related to both action painting and Abstract expressionism. Life Donald Martiny studied from 1977 to 1980 at the School of Visual Arts in Ne ...

Kehinde Wiley Kehinde Wiley (born February 28, 1977) he returned to Nigeria, leaving Freddie to raise the couple's six children. 3/sup> Wiley has said that his family survived on welfare checks and the limited income earned by his mother's 'thrift store' – ...

Carlos Amorales Carlos Amorales (Mexico City, 1970) is a multidisciplinary artist who studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. The most extensive researches in his work encompass ''Los Amorales'' (1996-2001), ''Liquid Archive'' (1 ...

(''Black Cloud''), and

Helen Frankenthaler Helen Frankenthaler (December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011) was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s u ...

. It has 20th Century Sculpture by

Aristide Maillol Aristide Joseph Bonaventure Maillol (; December 8, 1861 – September 27, 1944) was a French Sculpture, sculptor, Painting, painter, and printmaking, printmaker.Le Normand-Romain, Antoinette . "Maillol, Aristide". ''Grove Art Online. Oxford ...

Max Ernst Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealis ...

, Hans Arp,

Jacob Epstein Sir Jacob Epstein (10 November 1880 – 21 August 1959) was an American-British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British subject in 1911. He often produce ...

, and

Giacometti Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, Drafter, draftsman and Printmaking, printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo, ...

Education

The museum offers several educational programs. The museum's Education Division programming is segmented by audience and type of learning strategy to accommodate a range of ages and learning styles, both formal and informal. The Education Division also facilitates a nationally competitive Internship program. Internships are offered to current undergraduates, graduate students, and recent graduates with requisite coursework, experience, and background. The program is offered year-round and project-based internships are also offered on occasion.

Lemon Art Research Library

The Lemon Art Research Library is a non-circulating research library with an emphasis on the museum's art collection. It contains more than 40,000 books, periodicals, artist files and more. It is the largest specialized fine arts library in the region. It is free of charge during public hours.

Funding

Community support accounts for approximately 80% of the museum's revenue through admissions, membership and earned revenue, which includes the store and facility rentals. Government support of the museum is approximately 3% of the budget; corporate contributions constitute approximately 10% of the budget. The museum's endowment contributes the remainder, approximately 7%.

Gallery

File:Phx Art Museum SW03.jpg, Adelaide Labille-Guiard, ''Madame Adelaide'', 1791 File:Phx Art Museum SW05.jpg, Jean-Léon Gérôme, ''Thumbs Down'', 1872 File:Phx Art Museum SW04.jpg, Julius LeBlanc Stewart, ''Spring Flowers'', 1890 File:Phx Art Museum SW06.jpg, Eugene Boudin, ''The Old Harbor at Touques'', 1891 File:Phx Art Museum SW08.jpg, Antonio Rizzi, ''Study in White'', 1896 File:Phx Art Museum SW07.jpg, Edouard Vuillard, ''Madame Hessel Working at a Dressmaker's Table'', 1908 File:Phx Art Museum SW01.jpg, Willard Franklin Midgette, ''Processing Sheep'', 1976 File:Phx Art Museum SW02.jpg, Kenneth Riley, ''Bodmer Painting Piegan Chief'', 1986

References

External links

Phoenix Art Museum
website {{authority control Phoenix Points of Pride Museums in Phoenix, Arizona Institutions accredited by the American Alliance of Museums Art museums and galleries in Arizona Works Progress Administration in Arizona Art museums established in 1959 1959 establishments in Arizona Alden B. Dow buildings Asian art museums in the United States Federal Art Project