Commercial Appeal journalists cover the important moments in Memphis
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- The new Memphis Art Museum in Downtown is set for a public opening in December 2026.
- The new $180-million, 122,000-square-foot facility will be located on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River.
- Designed by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron, the museum will feature a rooftop sculpture garden and significantly more gallery space.
The Memphis Art Museum — the much-anticipated new Downtown location of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art — will open to the public in December 2026, museum officials announced Oct. 30.
Touted as a milestone in Downtown riverfront redevelopment, a must-visit tourist attraction, and a project of unprecedented ambition for Memphis as a hub for the arts, the $180-million Memphis Art Museum has been under construction since a groundbreaking ceremony on June 1, 2023.
The 122,000-square-foot museum will stretch along Front Street from Union to Monroe, on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, and will feature such attractions as a large “community courtyard” and an extensive rooftop sculpture garden. Its numerous exhibit spaces will include street-level galleries fronted by a transparent glass façade that museum officials say will “blur the line between museum and city.”
Described by museum leaders in an Oct. 30 news release as “one of the largest civic and cultural developments underway in the region,” the Memphis Art Museum was designed by Herzog & de Meuron, a Swiss firm that in 2001 was awarded the Pritzker Prize, which is to architecture what the Nobel Prize is to literature. The firm’s notable projects have included the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, and the firm handled the renovation of the Tate Modern in London. The local “architect on record” for the project is Memphis-based archimania, working in collaboration with the Swiss team.
“Memphis has a long history as a vibrant hub for art and culture,” said Zoe Kahr, executive director of the Memphis Art Museum, in a statement. “This expansive and innovative new campus will further reinforce the city’s status as a global cultural destination.”
Largely funded by a capital campaign that included a $40 million donation from the Hyde Foundation and $30 million from the city, the new museum, with its new name, represents not just a relocation but a reimagining of the Overton Park-based Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, a Beaux Arts-style Georgian marble building that cost $115,000 and opened in 1916.
In preparation for the move, the museum’s newly appointed chief curator is Patricia Lee Daigle, who had been curator of modern and contemporary art at the Brooks. Daigle replaces Rosamund Garrett, who had been at the Brooks for seven year. A native of the United Kingdom, Garrett is now head of collections at the Chester Beatty, a library and museum at Dublin Castle in Ireland.
According to the museum, Daigle will help the new museum with “new acquisitions that expand narratives around American and global contemporary art,” to better reflect the increasing diversity of the Memphis community, and to “position Memphis as a growing site of contemporary art dialogue in the South.”
Daigle will have plenty of room for that “dialogue”: Gallery space in the new museum will increase by 50% over the Overton Park site, while what is described as “free civic space” will increase by 600%.
Brooks officials say the 2026 opening will mark the climax of a particularly significant year for the arts in Memphis. The National Civil Rights Museum is expected to open its expanded Legacy Building next year, while the National Ornamental Metal Museum completes its move to Overton Park.
“In addition,,” the museum’s news release states, “2026 marks historic anniversaries for many of Memphis’s beloved cultural institutions, including 90 years of live music at Overton Park Shell, 70 years of Opera Memphis, 50 years of Dixon Gallery & Gardens, 40 years of Ballet Memphis, 20 years of the Hattiloo Theatre, and 20 years of Collage Dance Center. Together, these milestones reflect a powerful moment of cultural investment and celebration in the city where blues, soul, and rock ‘n’ roll were born.”
