Memphis Art Museum Sets December 6 Opening for Herzog & de Meuron Riverfront Building
The Memphis Art Museum will open its new riverfront home on December 6, marking a major shift for the institution formerly known as the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. The move brings the museum into a 123,500-square-foot mass timber building on the Mississippi riverfront, where free admission for Shelby County residents will be permanent.
The reopening will be anchored by “Making Beauty: Hooks Brothers Studio, 1907-1984,” an exhibition devoted to a historic Black-owned photography studio that operated in Memphis for much of the 20th century. Organized in partnership with the National Civil Rights Museum, the presentation will include more than 150 photographs made by the studio founded by Henry Hooks Sr and Robert Hooks Sr. The show draws its title from the studio’s motto: “Where There’s Beauty We Take It, Where There’s None We Make It.”
The museum’s new building, designed by Herzog & de Meuron with Memphis-based archimania as architect of record, expands gallery space by 50 percent. It also includes a 10,000-square-foot community courtyard and a 50,000-square-foot rooftop art garden. The project’s total cost, including new park space and infrastructure and pedestrian improvements, is $222 million, according to a museum spokesperson.
Inside, the museum will debut 19 capsule presentations drawn from its permanent collection, which is especially strong in Old Masters, American art from the late 19th and 20th centuries, photography, and contemporary art. Rather than following a strict chronology, the displays are organized as thematic “short stories.” Among them are “Speaking in Shapes,” focused on geometric abstraction; “The River Calling: Storytelling in Memphis and the Mississippi Delta,” which highlights artists from the region; and “Rhapsodies in Black,” which examines jazz’s influence on Black artists working in abstract modes.
The museum will remain in its longtime Overton Park home through the autumn before relocating downtown. Once the move is complete, it will sit closer to the city’s core, a short walk upriver from Tom Lee Park, the waterfront green space that opened in 2023. For Memphis, the new building is not only a change of address, but a redefinition of the museum’s public role: more central, more open, and more closely tied to the city it serves.
