Spotlight: Phoenix Art Musuem With Kids

The Phoenix Museum of Art is the Southwest’s largest museum for visual arts.  It attracts highly acclaimed temporary exhibitions, but also houses a permanent collection of contemporary European and American art.  The Museum offers voluntary donation hours throughout the month. When in Phoenix, it’s definitely worthwhile to stop at the Phoenix Museum of Art with kids. 

• Kid Facts:  The Phoenix Art Museum opened in 1959, just 47 years after Arizona became the 48th state to join the US.

Visiting the Phoenix Art Museum With Kids

The Phoenix Art Museum’s family focused activities are outlined in the Museum’s “I’m Here With Kids” pamphlet.  The Museum offers Discount Tire Free Family Weekends every second weekend of the month and also Make It!, which includes hands-on activities on the last Wednesday of the month (during the Museum’s voluntary donation hours).   The unique outdoor sculpture garden is a highlight for those visiting with kids, especially Sui Jianguo’s Jurassic Age sculpture of a caged red dinosaur.  This sculpture is reminiscent of Clifford, the big red dog and particularly interesting to kids.

The Museum’s child-focus extends to the James K. Ballinger Interactive Gallery (aka the Hub).  The Hub offers an open area with stadium seating, bright paintings and books for kids to interact with art at their own pace.

• Kid Facts:  The current exhibit on display in the Hub is Poetry in Motion, which includes works of art that use line, color, shape and form to as poetic reflections of the world.

Favorite Exhibits at the Phoenix Art Museum With Kids

Our favorite exhibit was Carlos Amorales’ Black Cloud, which is on display at the Phoenix Art Museum for one year.   Black Cloud includes 25,000 black paper moths and butterflies affixed to gallery walls.  Mexican artist Carlos Amorales was inspired by the annual migration of monarch butterflies and conceived of a plague of moths swarming through the Museum.   The sheer number of moths and butterflies is overwhelming and reminded me of an eerie scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, but the beauty and detail of each individual insect was stunning.

• Kid Facts:  This is the second time that Black Cloud, which premiered in 2007, has been on display at the Phoenix Art Museum.  More than 30 different species of moths and butterflies are depicted.

Gilbert Stuart’s painting of George Washington definitely required a double take.  This was one of Stuart’s paintings of Washington that served as a basis for the image that appears on the front of the one dollar bill.  I found $1 in my handbag to compare.

• Kid Facts:  Artist Gilbert Stuart is best known for his unfinished painting of George Washington known as The Athenaeum, which is the basis for the 75 copies, including this one.

Yayoi Kusama’s You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies is a mixed-media installation with LED lights on exhibit through 2020.  This was definitely a surreal installation and disorienting at first.  Kusama was inspired by a Japanese folk tale about a person in a field with 10,000 fire flies.  Kusama brings the tale to life in a dark, mirrored room with dangling LED lights.  It is one of the few art exhibits in which “do not touch” does not apply.  It is impossible not to touch a few of the thousands dangling lights while weaving through the installation.  Photographs just cannot do this exhibition justice.  It has to be experienced in person.

• Kid Facts:  Kusama is a contemporary artist and is one of the most well-known living Japanese artists.

Cornelia Parker’s Mass (Colder Darker Matter) was another favorite exhibit, which was made from burnt wood of a Texas Baptist church struck by lightning, wire and string.  The burnt wood appears to float in place in mid-air and is stunning to view from many angles.

• Kid Facts:  When Cornelia Parker was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1997, she exhibited Mass (Colder Darker Matter).  The Turner Prize is the UK’s most prestigious art honor that is awarded annually to a British visual artist by the Tate.  The only time the Turner Prize shortlist included only female artists was in 1997.

The Phoenix Museum of Art features artists from the American Southwest and Mexico, as well of area landscapes.  We particularly enjoyed Thomas Moran’s Zoroaster Temple at Sunset, which magnificently captures the Grand Canyon.

• Kid Facts:  Thomas Moran was a landscape artist famous for his paintings of Yellowstone.  He first traveled to the Grand Canyon in 1873 to document this natural wonder and completed this painting in 1916.

Phoenix Museum of Art With Kids

We were glad we stopped at the Phoenix Museum of Art and definitely suggest planning a visit to the Phoenix Museum of Art with kids for a wonderful educational experience about art and the Southwest.  While we had only had a few hours in Phoenix during this visit, we can’t wait to check out all the other family-friendly things to do in Phoenix the next time we are in town.

Every so often, we encounter a place that is so fabulous for those traveling with kids that it is worthy of being featured on its own. For more of our favorite locations, please check out our other Spotlight features!