From Park to River: Building the Museum’s Collection

The Memphis Art Museum, then named the Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, first opened in 1916 in picturesque Overton Park. It flourished there for over a century until moving to its present location in 2026, situated along the banks of the mighty Mississippi River in historic Downtown Memphis. Pivotal collecting groups such as Art Today and the Decorative Arts Trust have made significant contributions to the museum’s holdings of modern and contemporary art and decorative arts respectively. Major gifts of art from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and Hugo N. and Margaret O. Dixon have formed the core of the museum’s collection of European art from the Renaissance to Impressionism. From Park to River explores this history, highlighting a selection of major gifts and purchases that have shaped the museum’s collection since its founding.

The exhibition begins with the museum’s first two acquisitions: Cecilia Beaux’s portraits of the museum’s original benefactor Bessie Vance Brooks and her husband, Samuel Hamilton Brooks. It ends with Calida Rawles’s painting Towner for Life, a proposed acquisition by the Black Art Collective and the Blackmon Perry Fund. Spanning styles and geographies, the works on view here are a testament to the generosity of the museum’s supporters and its profound impact on the collection today and into the future.

From Park to River: Building the Museum’s Collection is curated by Patricia Lee Daigle, Ph.D., Chief Curator, with support from Mallory Sharp, Ph.D., Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Mississippi. It is supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.

All exhibitions at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art are underwritten by the MBMA Exhibition Fund: Lead support provided by Kay Clark, and Maggie and Milton Lovell, with additional funding from Anonymous, Irene and Ron Ayotte, Gloria and Kenneth Boyland, Deborah and Bob Craddock, Susan and James Edelman, Debi and Galen Havner, Sally Hergenrader, James R. Humphreys, Betty and George Johnson, Kristen and Jay Keegan, Valerie and Carl Person, Deborah D. Tipton, Bill Townsend, and the Doris S. and Hubert Kiersky Charitable Remainder Trust.