Arts & Culture (Specialty) in Phoenix
A Frank Lloyd Wright studio carries UNESCO World Heritage status, the region's largest art museum spans 285,000 square feet downtown, and a north Phoenix museum organizes its entire global collection by country rather than by instrument type. A permanent James Turrell skyspace sits atop a converted 1929 movie theater in Scottsdale, and the Heard Museum holds one of the country's foremost collections of Hopi katsina dolls.
Taliesin West
Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home, studio, and architecture school in Scottsdale was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2019 as part of a joint listing of eight Wright buildings, "The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright." It has also been a National Historic Landmark since 1982, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation still runs an architecture school and guided tours from the campus.
Phoenix Art Museum
Phoenix Art Museum occupies 285,000 square feet, described as the largest space of any visual-art museum in the southwestern United States, and holds a permanent collection of more than 18,000 works spanning European masters, American modernism, fashion design, and contemporary art. It has grown through successive expansions from a 25,000-square-foot building at its 1959 founding to its current footprint.
Musical Instrument Museum (MIM)
MIM in north Phoenix arranges its collection by country and culture rather than by instrument family, pairing instruments from nearly 200 nations with video and audio of them being played in their home settings — an approach the museum describes as unique among instrument museums worldwide. It opened in 2010, was founded by former Target Corp. chairman Robert Ulrich, and its holdings run to several thousand instruments and related artifacts.
Heard Museum
Founded in 1929 by Dwight and Maie Heard, the Heard Museum is built in part around the Barry Goldwater Collection of Hopi katsina dolls, widely regarded as one of the most comprehensive collections of its kind on public display, alongside broad holdings of Native American fine art and material culture from tribes across the Southwest. The museum also runs the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market, one of the country's longest-running juried Native art markets.
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA)
SMoCA occupies a retrofit, by Phoenix architect Will Bruder, of a former movie theater, and its roof holds a permanent "Knight Rise" skyspace by artist James Turrell — a site-specific light installation visitors can sit inside at sunrise and sunset. The museum opened in 1999 and focuses on contemporary art, design, and architecture.
Rosson House, Heritage Square
Built in 1894-95 for physician and Phoenix mayor Roland Rosson, this Stick-Eastlake Queen Anne Victorian was one of the first houses in the city built of fired brick rather than adobe, and it has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1971. It anchors Heritage Square, the last surviving block of residential Phoenix's original 1870s townsite, and today operates as a house museum with guided tours.