Phoenix Art Museum

The Phoenix Art Museum is the largest art museum in the American Southwest, occupying a landmark building in the Midtown Cultural District that has been expanded and renovated several times since its founding in 1959. The permanent collection spans more than 20,000 works covering 5,000 years of world art history, with particular depth in American Western art, Latin American modernism, Asian decorative arts, and fashion design. The museum's fashion collection is one of the most significant in the American West, with holdings that trace the history of dress from the 18th century to the present.

The Western American galleries are among the finest anywhere, presenting work from the 19th-century survey painters who first documented the landscape of the frontier West through the Taos Society of Artists and the contemporary artists who continue the region's painting traditions today. The Latin American collection is equally distinguished, with strong holdings in Mexican muralism and the international modernist movements that emerged from it. The museum has been particularly active in collecting and presenting the work of contemporary artists from Arizona and the broader Southwest, making it an essential resource for understanding the current state of regional art practice.

Rotating special exhibitions have included major retrospectives of internationally significant artists alongside shows dedicated to the history of Arizona and Southwest art. The museum's Artlink program connects it to Phoenix's First Friday gallery walk in the adjacent Roosevelt Row arts district, extending its reach into the city's grassroots creative community. The Heard Museum, the dedicated institution for Indigenous arts and cultures, is located a short walk north, and visitors with serious interest in the full range of Phoenix's cultural offerings should plan time for both. The Phoenix Art Museum is free to visit on the first Friday evening of each month and on the first Sunday of each month, making it genuinely accessible to the city's full community.