The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts offers an inspiring array of visual, performing arts, and educational experiences. The Museum is committed to creating an inclusive cultural space for the community to engage with diverse artistic perspectives through the AMFA Foundation’s 14,000 object permanent collection, compelling temporary exhibitions, lively theatre, and enriching courses.
The mission of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts is to create an inclusive cultural space that inspires and builds community through the visual and performing arts. Serving the state of Arkansas and beyond, AMFA provides enriching experiences in the arts for all.
By actively engaging the diversity within our community, AMFA serves as a cultural hub where everyone is invited to grow and learn. Staff and faculty will ensure a safe, accepting, and hospitable space for personal and artistic development by offering inclusive programs with a broad audience reach.
People of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities can experience the arts at AMFA. Staff and faculty will be approachable and accessible, and AMFA programs, services, and materials will be available for free or at a range of price points that are considerate of broad audiences.
Staff and faculty are experts in their fields. They serve in leadership roles in the state’s arts community and steward institutional resources for our community of educators, students, and partners.
Wonder, playfulness, and boundless curiosity are always welcome at AMFA. By engaging the senses and encouraging doing and making, our audiences deepen their social, emotional, physical, and intellectual engagement with the arts.
Relationships with community members, stakeholders, and partners will always be built with respect, trust, and a collaborative spirit in mind. AMFA works thoughtfully and purposefully with partners to strengthen community ties.
Staff and faculty will employ qualitative and quantitative analysis to guide development of cutting-edge multidisciplinary programs, to ensure responsiveness and relevance to our audiences, and to cultivate life-long relationships with the arts.
We acknowledge that we are on the traditional land of the Quapaw people, a land where the people had developed societal, agricultural, and sacred sites. We also acknowledge that we benefit from the Quapaw’s loss of land which had innumerable repercussions on the culture and population of the Quapaw people.
This land acknowledgement challenges us to learn about the Quapaw people, their history, culture, contributions to and continued presence in our community.
Approved by the Quapaw Nation and Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Board of Trustees
The Museum’s history dates back more than 100 years. In 1914, a group of intrepid women formed the Fine Arts Club with a mission to bring the arts to Arkansas.
The Fine Arts Club planted the seeds that were realized when the Museum of Fine Arts opened in downtown Little Rock’s MacArthur Park in 1937. Built by the Works Progress Administration – and featuring a stunning Art Deco façade – the Museum of Fine Arts was the first museum dedicated to the fine arts in the state of Arkansas.
In 1959, as the museum’s art collection and mission continued to grow, the Museum of Fine Arts launched a fundraising campaign to create a statewide center for the arts. Led by Winthrop Rockefeller, who would become the governor of Arkansas in 1967, the campaign emphasized that the institution would serve all of Arkansas – and encouraged Arkansas residents to get involved. Businesses and individuals from all parts of the state made donations – including children who saved nickels and dimes in jars. In 1960, the Little Rock Board of Directors adopted an ordinance officially establishing the Arkansas Arts Center, and the new building – an addition to the 1937 museum – opened in 1963.
Over the next 50 years, as the institution and its mission continued to grow in scale and in scope, the Arkansas Arts Center’s MacArthur Park building underwent seven further expansions to accommodate its growing collection and community. In a 1982 renovation and expansion, the Museum of Fine Arts’ art deco façade was preserved as a feature of the building’s interior galleries.
In 2016, a project to reimagine the Arkansas Arts Center for the 21st century began when Little Rock residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of a hotel-tax bond to renovate its MacArthur Park building. That same year, Studio Gang was selected as the project’s design architects for their vision of the new building. In 2017, SCAPE joined as the project’s landscape architects with Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects as associate architects.
In October 2019, this transformational project broke ground, and in 2021, the Arkansas Arts Center changed its name to the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. On April 22, 2023, AMFA celebrated its historic Grand Opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, then officially opened its doors for guests.
The new Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts was realized through a public-private partnership, starting with a $31 million commitment from the City of Little Rock generated by a hotel tax revenue bond. Contributions from generous private donors more than quadrupled the public commitment, with a final campaign total of $170.8 million.
AMFA thanks the Windgate Foundation, Harriet and Warren Stephens, Terri and Chuck Erwin, Robyn and John Horn, the Winthrop Rockefeller Charitable Trust, Katie and Miles Stephens, Mary Olive and John Stephens, and Laura and Cliff Brookshire for their transformative lead gifts to the development of the new Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. The Windgate Art School, Harriet and Warren Stephens Galleries, Terri and Chuck Erwin Collections Research Center, Robyn and John Horn Gallery, Governor Winthrop Rockefeller Lecture Hall, and Amerine/Calhoun Glass Box are named in recognition of these lead gifts.
The Campaign benefited from the support of 21st Century Founders ($1 million to $35 million), Leadership Donors ($100,000 to $999,999), Major Donors ($25,000 to $99,999), and many others who have made generous donations at every gift level.
On behalf of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Board, Foundation Board, and Staff, we offer our sincere thanks to the 21st Century Founders, Leadership Donors, and Major Donors listed below. Your commitment made this project possible, and we are grateful.
The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts is supported in part by the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Foundation; Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Foundation Board of Directors; Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Board of Trustees; Windgate Foundation; City of Little Rock; City of North Little Rock; and Arkansas Arts Council, an agency of the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage, and Tourism, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
