My name is Kate Orff, Founding Partner at SCAPE—the landscape architecture firm behind the new landscapes at the reimagined Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts. We’ve worked collaboratively with Studio Gang and the Museum for years to bring a world-class civic and cultural space to Little Rock that can serve generations of art lovers to come.
In our earliest conversations, the new building was conceived of as a true “museum in the park”—a cultural institution that also strengthens the connective tissue between downtown Little Rock and MacArthur Park.
Our firm, SCAPE, worked collaboratively with Studio Gang to create a fluid relationship between architecture and landscape, so key indoor spaces flow seamlessly into and frame views of the surrounding MacArthur Park, the oldest municipal park in Little Rock. The design also incorporates and celebrates plants and materials native to Arkansas—a state with extraordinary ecological diversity.
The Museum’s real centerpiece is the “blossom”—a long, contiguous hallway that connects the North and South Plazas at either entrance. At the South Plaza, the blossom reaches outdoors through a series of petal-shaped rain gardens that extend out into the park. These gardens are planted with over 50 species of lush perennials that create a colorful foreground for the park’s established oak canopy. Visit the Museum on a rainy day and you may catch stormwater cascading off the roof into stone “splash pads” at the highest point of each rain garden, directing its flow outward into the park and Foster Pond to be filtered and absorbed. Each of these splash pads are framed by custom sculptural benches that echo the form of the museum’s signature folded-plate roof along the ground level.
The new landscape creates opportunities for art appreciation in an outdoor setting, shaping space for an expanded open-air sculpture collection, art production, and public events and performances. We worked to expand the arboretum surrounding the Museum, planting over 200 trees like native oaks and wax myrtles that will gradually merge with the existing canopy over time. Together with the gardens and a revived soil matrix across the entire landscape, this design will help rejuvenate biodiversity for downtown Little Rock by providing valuable habitat for birds and pollinators. Oak trees, for instance, provide a critical food source for the caterpillars of native butterflies and moths—providing, in turn, a food source for songbirds to feed their nestlings.
At a broader scale, the landscapes around the new Museum encapsulate its mission writ large—to create a more open and welcoming cultural commons, seamlessly bridging together indoor and outdoor spaces to reflect, gather, and celebrate the region’s artistic and environmental richness.
