The Harriet and Warren Stephens Galleries brings together over 150 diverse works from the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Foundation Collection, as well as artwork from around the world.
Featuring a central, diagonal vein which runs the length of the building, the Harriet and Warren Stephens Galleries flow together uninterrupted by hard corners or closed doors. They are at once individual in the grouping and presentation of the featured artwork, but also unified presenting the Museum’s collection like one, uninterrupted breath.
At the northernmost corner of the central diagonal line is a large window known as the Art Perch, which reveals the featured artwork inside to arriving guests on the northern Crescent Lawn.
The Art Perch, paired with the diagonal slice, provides the galleries with natural light, while still protecting the artwork from direct sun.
Each of the five galleries feature works from the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Foundation Collection, which is the only Arkansas collection actively collecting internationally.
The first gallery includes notable highlights from the collection, while the second gallery focuses on the collection’s oldest works spanning five hundred years from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
The third gallery features both American and European Impressionist work celebrating notable artists such as Claude Monet and Pierre-August Renoir, accentuated by a monumental, blown glass still life by contemporary American artist Beth Lipman.
The fourth gallery is devoted to the Modernist movement and features work from the United States, Russia, France, and the Netherlands.
The fifth and northernmost gallery features some of the Museum’s most exceptional contemporary art, while the 32-foot, Art Perch window offers an unparalleled view of the Crescent Lawn.
Though the slice through the Harriet and Warren Stephens Galleries leads you to the Art Perch, the galleries offer a number of different paths. Each invites you to experience the artwork in a new light.
