Program areas at Phoenix Art Museum
1) collections and exhibitions: Phoenix Art Museum is a nonprofit Museum founded in 1959. The main purpose of the Museum is to engage the broadest segment of the population with the historical and aesthetic attributes of the visual and associated performing arts. Our fine arts collection consists of more than 21,000 purchased and donated works of asian, latin american, european, american, modern, and contemporary Art and fashion design. On average, the Museum has welcomed more than 223,000 visitors per year for the past decade. In fy22, the Museum welcomed more than 141,000 visitors, marking a continual increase to pre-pandemic attendance figures. Exhibition highlights included landscapes of extraction: the Art of mining in the american west, which explored the modern evolution of mining imagery through more than 65 paintings and prints from the early- to mid-20th century. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue were made possible, in part, by a grant from the national endowment for the humanities, the Museum's first neh grant in a decade. Generation paper: fast fashion of the 1960s explored the phenomenon of paper and disposable garments through 80 rare works from the Museum's fashion-design collectionhome to one of the leading collections of paper fashion in the world. The exhibition is now on view at the Museum of Art and design in new york city. Desert rider featured work by latinx and indigenous artists working in the southwest who draw inspiration from lowrider, skateboarding, and custom-car culture. Large-scale installations, prints, sculptures, and more explored issues of mobility and migration, labor, sexuality and gender, identity, and indigeneity. The exhibition is now on view at the denver Art Museum. Also last year, Phoenix Art Museum added 199 artworks into its collection. Highlights include a painting by rashid johnson, one of the most celebrated contemporary artists working today who creates searing meditations on race and class. The Museum also acquired an outstanding landscape by jacob van ruisdael, considered one of the greatest dutch landscape painters. The artwork was stolen by the nazis during world war ii, and following the end of the war, it was held in restitution by the dutch government until eventually returned to the family of its rightful owners, before making its way into the phxart collection. Additionally of note, the Museum acquired approximately 50 indonesian textiles. The gift represented the first acquisition of works from indonesia, expanding the total nations represented in the institution's Art of asia collection to 14.
3) Museum store: the Museum store enhances the visitor experience by offering products related to exhibitions and artworks on view in the Museum, ensuring engagement with phxart and the visual arts long after guests have left the Museum campus and returned home.
2) education and community engagement: the Museum's education and community engagement team develops, implements, and oversees education programs and arts-engagement events and experiences for a wide range of audiences. The Museum's library preserves and develops an extensive collection of art-related scholarly and rare publications. The library is open to staff and the public for research and enjoyment. In fy22, the Museum engaged more than 47,000 community members through on-site arts engagement programs, including docent-led tours for adults and school groups, senior coffee socials for members 65 and older, storytime in the gallery sessions for visitors 0-5 years old and their caregivers, and weekly mindfulness sessions presented in collaboration with hospice of the valley.