It is the largest art museum in the southwestern United States - 285,000 square feet holding more than 21,000 works - and it started with a building by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. The Phoenix Art Museum, at 1625 North Central Avenue in the city's Central Corridor, opened on 18 November 1959. The original three-storey building came from Alden B. Dow, the Michigan architect who trained at Taliesin; a 1965 east wing tripled the museum to 75,000 square feet, and successive expansions - including a major 1996 renovation that added the 300-seat Whiteman Hall theater - built it to its current scale. The collection spans nine areas: American and Western American art, Asian, European, Viceregal Latin American, modern and contemporary work, and one of the country's most significant fashion-design collections, supplemented since 2006 by a landmark photography partnership with the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson. The crowd-pleasers earn their fame: Yayoi Kusama's infinity mirror room You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies is among the most-shared artworks in Arizona, and the museum's Thorne miniature rooms and Philip C. Curtis galleries anchor repeat visits. The museum is also a performance venue: Whiteman Hall hosts live music, lectures and one of the region's best independent and international film programs, while festivals, a monthly live-music series and First Friday openings keep the building active after gallery hours. Practical notes: the McDowell Road light-rail stop is steps from the entrance; around 250,000 visitors a year come through, general admission includes the collection with ticketed specials on top, and voluntary-donation evenings make it one of Phoenix's best free cultural nights. The 1996 expansion made national architecture press: the doubled, 160,000-square-foot building added the Lemon Art Research Library, studio classrooms and the interactive children's gallery that evolved into today's Hub.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: 1625 North Central Avenue, Phoenix, AZ, United States, 85004

Website: https://phxart.org

Opening Date: 18/11/1959

Serves Food

Accessible