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| - I visited the Phoenix Art Museum for the first time on a Wednesday when admission is waived for a voluntary contribution during the hours of 3-9PM. The free admission seems popular and the museum was a abuzz with a lively crowd of all ages.
I spent a leisurely four hours and discovered many entirely unexpected surprises and a few new favorites. The Modern, Contemporary, American, and Southwestern galleries appeared to have the most extensive collections, while the Asian collection is the smallest. The entire museum is a pleasant and comfortable space to spend some time, especially during the hot season.
The Modern collection offers work from Marsden Hartley, Diego Rivera, William Zorach, Joseph Stella, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, Willem DeKooning, and Peter Wegner.
The Southwestern collection offers a full wall of ten of George Catlin's pencil sketches of Native Americans from 1855; John Sloan's "Palace of the Governors" (1919) and "A Road to Santa Fe" (1924); Georgia O'Keefe's miniatures, "White Rose" and "The Green Apple" (1920), and the larger "Canyon Country" (1965); Willard Nash's "Santa Fe Landscape" (1925); Ernest Blumenshein's "Fishing on Eagle Nest Lake" (1931); Howard Terpning's "Offerings to the Little People" (1998); Peter Hurd's "Portrait of Nito" (1961) and "Polo Game"; and other representative works by Henry Cheever Pratt, Nicolai Fechin, Lew Davis, Maynard Dixon, and Paul Pletka.
Passing through the European collection one will be surprised to find Claude Monet's "Flowering Arches, Giverny", as well as Auguste Rodin's sculptures, "The Kiss" (1880) and "Jean D'Aire" (1904), and Andrea Della Robbia's bust sculpture, "An Aged Apostle" (1490). Two notable Western sculptures are Frederic Remington's "Mountain Man" (1903), George Phippen's "Roy Wayland" (1965),
The top floor of the museum's South Wing is home to a few exceptional experiential art installations that must not be missed.
As the elevator doors open on this level, immediately before you is a mesmerizing digital projection installation by Jennifer Steinkamp titled, "Mike Kelley 13". Entirely digitally designed, her work is that of a tree with limber, flexible branches endlessly shifting and dancing in the wind, captivating the viewer into a trance of peace and wonder. Over the course of nine minutes the tree further transitions through the seasons. Chairs have been thoughtfully provided on the side to allow one to fully surrender to this soothing experience.
Just around the corner is the breathtaking installation by Cornelia Parker, titled "Mass (Colder Darker Matter)", which is composed of charred chunks of wood in varying sizes suspended from the ceiling on filament, forming a large three dimensional spatial cube. The charred wood used here was salvaged from a burned church in Texas ignited by a lightning strike. This installation is fully open on one side to the gallery but provides the best viewing experience and highest contrast when viewed through the portal on the side. Before coming to Phoenix, this work had previously been installed at the Tate Gallery in London, UK.
Inside of a 12x15 darkened room with mirrored walls, one finds Yayoi Kusama's installation titled "You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies", which is an unforgettable atmospheric and spatial experience. The installation consists of LED lights suspended on cords from the ceiling. The LED's slowly cycle through various colors and luminosities and are multiplied into infinity by the mirrored surfaces of the room. The experience is one of being afloat in the middle of the Milky Way. You enter the room on one end, move across the dark space, and exit on the other end. It was very easy to spend some extended time inside the space and really appreciate it, even to sit on the floor. Others didn't linger inside and merely passed in and right out again, perhaps due to being disoriented by the darkness.
If the Wednesday free admission hours are inconvenient, the museum is also one of the available venues in the CulturePass program offered through the public libraries throughout the Valley. Depending upon weekly availability at your local library, use your library card to get free admission for two through CulturePass.
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