It is said that people have three places: If the first place is your home and the second place is your work, the third place is for building community and exchanging ideas.
The Cultural Living Room was designed as your third place — a welcoming social space that brings together architecture, nature, art, and history.
Adjacent to the Harriet and Warren Stephens Galleries, the Cultural Living Room serves as a gathering and event space at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.
Featuring a coffee and cocktail bar, it provides a comfortable, inviting place for you to rest, reflect, and converse.
The Cultural Living Room’s large, angled windows give you a sense of hovering above the Crescent Lawn and MacArthur Park, while serving as a beacon to attract and welcome visitors from Downtown.
The Cultural Living Room also completes the artistic throughline begun in the Atrium, featuring the same suspended, cascading wood ceiling and aggregate stone veins in the floor.
That floor is equipped with a radiant heating and cooling system, with water-filled coils embedded in the concrete, providing comfortable, even temperature control.
Floor diffusers line the perimeter of the space, providing fresh air as well as humidity control to reduce condensation — providing a perfect view year-round.
From the Cultural Living Room’s large windows, you are also provided a view of a few of the Museum’s outdoor sculptures.
Looking towards the city and to the left near the Art Perch is David Nash’s Two Columns, while to the right is Multiple Exits, a geometric sculpture in fabricated steel by Jack Slentz.
Facing the Courtyard Entrance to the south is the English modernist artist Henry Moore’s Large Standing Figure: Knife Edge, welcoming you to the historic 1937 façade of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts.
