What it is
Phoenix Art Museum is the Valley’s general art museum, the one institution here that tries to cover the whole subject. It calls itself the largest art museum in the southwestern United States and the claim holds: 285,000 square feet on Central Avenue at McDowell, more than 20,000 works, and departments for American, European, Asian, Latin American, Western American, modern and contemporary art, photography and fashion design. The building began in 1959 as an Alden Dow design, Dow being a Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice who went his own way, and was doubled twice by the New York architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, in 1996 and 2006, into the long, calm, concrete-and-glass museum you see now.
What people come for, in order: Yayoi Kusama’s firefly infinity room, a dark mirrored chamber of hanging lights that you enter for a timed minute; the Western American galleries, which hold the Remington-to-Taos painting tradition that Scottsdale’s Main Street galleries descend from; the fashion design collection, one of the few in an American general museum; Monet’s Flowering Arches, Giverny and Gérôme’s Pollice Verso, the painting that gave the thumbs-down to the movies; and whatever the big special exhibition is, which is usually the reason locals renew.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because Scottsdale has no general art museum and never will. SMoCA is contemporary only and small; the Old Town galleries are shops. If you want to stand in front of a nineteenth-century painting, or see what Western art looked like before the gallery trade standardized it, this is the only room within an hour. And on Wednesday evenings it costs whatever you put in the box.
The practical version
Twenty-two minutes from Old Town to Central and McDowell, free parking north of the entrance, the McDowell/Central light-rail stop outside. Open Wednesday through Sunday, closed Monday and Tuesday, late on Wednesday and Friday to 8. Voluntary-donation admission Wednesday 3 to 8 and First Friday 5 to 8. Two hours is a visit; pick a floor rather than attempting the building. Since April 2026 the second floor of the North Wing, with the European galleries and the Thorne miniature rooms, has been closed for fire-safety work; check the site if either is the reason you are going.
When to go
Wednesday after 3 is the local’s visit: free, open until 8, and quiet until the after-work crowd arrives around 5:30. First Friday, 5 to 8, is free too and much busier, part of the downtown art walk; it is fun and it is not the night to see the Kusama room without a line. Summer is when the museum earns its keep for visitors, as the one big indoor thing in central Phoenix that is not a mall.
The museum’s special exhibitions change two or three times a year and are the thing to check before you come; the fashion shows in particular draw people from out of state.
What to see, in two hours
- The Kusama room. First, before the line. The timed entry is short and there is a reason everyone photographs it.
- Western American art. The Remington, Russell and Taos Society paintings, and the Arizona painters after them. If you have been looking at the cowboy art on Main Street, this is the gallery that shows you where it came from and what the good version looks like.
- Fashion design. A collection of couture and American design that most general museums do not attempt, shown in rotating installations.
- The modern and contemporary galleries in the 2006 wing, and the sculpture garden off them.
- The Latin American and Asian floors, if there is time; both are deeper than visitors expect.
The Thorne miniature rooms, dollhouse-scale period interiors that children and adults both stand in front of for too long, are in the North Wing’s closed section as of this writing and will be back when the fire-safety work is done.
Eating
The museum has a café. The better plan is dinner on Central afterward: Durant’s, the 1950 steakhouse, is a mile north, and Pizzeria Bianco is a mile and a half south at Heritage Square, and both have their own guides in this section.
With kids
The Kusama room, the fashion galleries and the sculpture garden carry children through an hour; the Wednesday free window makes a short visit cost nothing, which is the right price for a child’s attention span. The Scottsdale with kids note has the pairing with the Heard.
The story
Phoenix had an arts association for decades and no museum until the city built one. The 1959 complex on Central was a civic gesture of the postwar boom: a library, a theater and an art museum in one Alden Dow design, dedicated in November of that year with a collection that fit in 25,000 square feet. The 1965 expansion tripled the space. The museum spent the next decades doing what regional museums do, building a Western American collection because that was the local subject, a Latin American one because of where Phoenix is, and an Asian one because a few donors cared, and acquiring the odd European masterwork when a bequest allowed.
The two Williams and Tsien expansions, in 1996 and 2006, made it a serious building. The architects, who later did the Barnes in Philadelphia and the Obama center in Chicago, gave the museum a long, low entrance on Central, a great hall, and in 2006 a contemporary wing and sculpture garden that brought the total to about 285,000 square feet. The Kusama room arrived in the years after and became the most visited work in the building. The Pay-What-You-Wish Wednesday program, sponsored by SRP and the city, has run for two decades and welcomed more than a million people.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s art trade and this museum have circled each other for sixty years. The Western painters whose work hangs here, and whose students’ work sells on Main Street, were the reason the Scottsdale gallery district formed in the 1950s; the museum’s Western department and the Scottsdale Art Auction draw the same collectors. SMoCA, which opened in 1999, took the contemporary side of the story so that the two institutions divide the ground rather than compete. Our museums note puts both in order for a visitor.
Getting there
From Old Town, Indian School Road west to Central, then south to McDowell, or McDowell Road straight west from south Scottsdale; 22 minutes either way with no traffic. Free parking in the lot north of the main entrance. The Valley Metro light rail stops at McDowell/Central beside the museum and at Encanto/Central beside the Heard, one stop apart, and runs on to downtown’s arena and ballpark; our light rail entry explains why Scottsdale is not on it and how to get to a station anyway.