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About Us

A Museum Built for Memphis

Memphis Art Museum opens December 2026 on the Mississippi River Bluff in the heart of downtown Memphis. The new 123,500-square-foot campus is the new home of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art — Tennessee's oldest and largest art museum, serving the city since 1916 — reimagined for the next century of Memphis cultural life.

The building was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning firm Herzog & de Meuron with Memphis-based architect of record archimania and landscape design by OLIN. It sits on the fourth Chickasaw Bluff, above the Mississippi River floodplain. Every material decision — the clay-toned brick, the Southern Yellow Pine timber structure, the glass facade that opens the building to the street — is rooted in this place.

The campus is designed to be used by the community, every day. All public amenities are located on a single street-level floor — galleries, lobby, cafe, education studios, store, and restaurant — creating an intuitive, fully accessible experience from the moment you arrive.

The Central Courtyard, rooftop sculpture garden, and Monroe Plaza are free and open to the public during museum hours. The restaurant and store operate independently, accessible whether the galleries are open or not.

Parking sits directly below the courtyard. The building is two minutes off I-40 via Riverside Drive. The walk from car to lobby is less than 25% of what it is at the current location.


The permanent collection spans nearly 10,000 works across 5,000 years of global human history.

At opening, distinct exhibitions will be organized around concept and lived human experience — asking what connects works across time, geography, and medium rather than organizing them by chronology alone.

The museum currently serves more than 20,000 school-aged children per year through programs including Art Builds Creativity, Art Therapy, school tours, and homeschool days.

The new facility is designed to significantly grow that number. The Interactive Space — a drop-in creative studio open to the public at no charge whenever the museum is open — makes art-making available to every visitor, every day the museum is open, no reservation required. The museum will host more than 400 events per year across its campus.

Explore the Building

Memphis Art Museum is a campus of distinct spaces, each designed with a specific purpose and a specific community in mind. Whether you're here for the galleries, the rooftop, a coffee meeting in the lobby, a performance in the theater, or an afternoon in the courtyard, there is a version of this museum that belongs to you.

Two men sitting in gallery observing a large painting of a woman floating in water

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