A VISION REALIZED

At long last, the renovated, expanded and rebranded Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts in Little Rock officially opened its doors to the public in April. Executive Director Victoria Ramirez and her staff welcomed visitors to the unveiling of the 20,000-square-foot, reimagined museum.

Photographer Stephen Lewis took part in a media sneak peek and captured the following images from the museum’s eight galleries and its opening exhibition, “Together.” by Stephen Lewis)

The museum’s permanent collection includes work by Rembrandt, Picasso, Wyeth and Degas.

In addition to the galleries, the renovated museum includes new entrances, an expanded art school, a performing arts theater, a lecture hall, an atrium, the “glass box terrace,” “the cultural living room” and the Park Grill restaurant with expansive views of the newly landscaped grounds inside MacArthur Park.

The museum was opened in 1937 as the Museum of Fine Arts and renamed the Arkansas Arts Center in 1961. A $70 million renovation project was announced in 2018, and the project was rebranded as the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, a nod to the museum’s original name, in 2021. Private fundraising, spearheaded by Harriet and Warren Stephens, had raised roughly $171 million by the opening with proceeds from the city’s hotel tax accounting for $31 million.

International firm Studio Gang served as the architecture lead with help from Little Rock’s Polk Stanley Wilcox while Conway-based Nabholz worked with Pepper Construction Group of Chicago and Doyne Construction of North Little Rock.

Kate Orff of Studio Gang directs visitors at the sneak peek; Harriet and Warren Stephens, co-chairs of the project’s capital campaign, visit with members of the media; AMFA Executive Director Victoria Ramirez discusses the works included in one of the museum’s new galleries; visitors checked out the new Park Grill overlooking the museum grounds.