![]() ![]() Iwan Baanīut it wouldn’t be an easy journey. A new, sweeping upper level defines a forecourt and houses a lounge. The renovation reexposed the original WPA-designed facade. This spring, a gleaming renovation by Chicago architecture firm Studio Gang in partnership with landscape office Scape, has helped the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts (AMFA) become a new beacon for the city of Little Rock and an essential new arts destination. But after a series of bulky additions swallowed the original building, it became clear that the museum needed a fresh path forward to bring new audiences through its doors. Over the decades, the museum became a vital Little Rock creative hub, adding a children’s theater (where then governor Bill Clinton remembers attending performances by his daughter, Chelsea) and an arts school in 1963. We have no masterpieces…but we have a credible nucleus.” “Great art collections like those of the Metropolitan Museum of New York and the Louvre of Paris with their priceless treasures are not formed in a day, especially in places not blessed with great riches. “The city has, at last, a museum it can be proud of,” remarked newspaperman Fred W. Hundreds of visitors crowded the galleries that night to take in etchings by Whistler and Rembrandt and works by fellow Arkansans. ![]() WPA laborers reportedly worked double shifts to complete the $70,000 state-of-the-art building, which featured, among other marvels, radiators trimmed in local marble, mahogany floors, and air-conditioning. When the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, opened the doors to its first-ever fine arts museum on a late October evening in 1937, it was clear that the institution would forever be a point of pride for the community. ![]()
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