Phoenix Art Museum

 

Lori and I like museums. Typically they are inexpensive entertainment and are educational. You can pick up tidbits from many subjects reading just the cards of art pieces that you find interesting. While this is increasing my ‘couch potato’ Jeopardy score I have not gotten as smart as I think. I had mistakenly assumed the “How can you call that art” category only occurred at university art galleries.  Universities tend to be more ‘subversive’ in their content in order to produce a well rounded graduate. A trip to the Phoenix Art Museum taught me otherwise. The Phoenix Art Museum is the Southwest United States largest art museum for visual art. The museum is 285,000-square-feet and displays 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 year-round programs of festivals, live performances, independent art films and educational programs. 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; and the landscaped Sculpture Garden;

Shortly after Arizona became the 48th state in 1912, the Phoenix Women’s Club was formed and worked with the Arizona State Fair Committee to develop a fine arts program. In 1915, the club purchased Carl Oscar Borg's painting Egyptian Evening for $125 and presented it to the city of Phoenix 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's Federal Art Project. 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.  In the early 1950s 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 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 25,000 square feet to 72,000 square feet. Additional expansions occurred in 1996. 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 Wing for Modern Art, the Heather and Michael Greenbaum Museum Lobby, an expanded museum store and the 40,000-square-foot Sculpture Garden. The museum's growth has been funded, in part, by successful City of Phoenix Bond Elections and a voter-approved bond.
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.

There are many interesting exhibits including the charred remains of a Texas Baptist church hanging from a string, and a display of 24,000 paper moths.

 If you follow my block you know there was a piece of ‘art’ in Albuquerque where the artist took a piece of white canvas and painted it solid white.  He then put it in a white frame.  Well, I would like you to meet a slightly more creative artist who still uses the wall as part of the piece. 

 Because the piece uses ready-made punctuation marks (in this case parens) the artist feels it incorporates the dimension of time into the work – Really?  

 One of the exhibits when Lori and I went was a fire-fly interpretation.  This was a mirrored room (think fun house here) with strings of small lights simulating fire-flies.  It was great – occasionally you would hear the loud ‘thunk’ of someone walking into one of the mirrored walls.  What a blast!