The Memphis Art Museum will open its new 123,500-square-foot riverfront campus to the public on December 6, 2026, marking a major new chapter for the 110-year-old institution formerly known as the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Designed by famed architecture studio Herzog & de Meuron with Memphis-based firm archimania as architect of record, the campus will expand gallery space by 50 percent. The redesign will add new public amenities including a rooftop art garden, community courtyard, amphitheater, and education spaces. The project broke ground in July 2023.
The inaugural programming will connect the museum’s collection with the history and culture of Memphis. At its center is “Making Beauty: Hooks Brothers Studio, 1907–1984,” a major exhibition dedicated to the Black-owned photography studio that documented generations of Black life in Memphis during the Jim Crow era and beyond. Featuring more than 150 photographs, the exhibition will place the Hooks Brothers’ archive in dialogue with the broader history of photography, including Harlem Renaissance photographer James Van Der Zee.
The museum’s collection of more than 10,000 works spanning 5,000 years of history will also be presented through 19 thematic installations rather than a traditional chronological survey. Highlights include “Rhapsodies in Black” an exhibition on jazz and Black abstraction featuring artists Sam Gilliam, Radcliffe Bailey, Torkwase Dyson, and James Little, and “Head to the Sky,” a presentation on Black American life with works by Jordan Casteel, Derek Fordjour, vanessa german, Titus Kaphar, and Nelson Stevens.
The opening will also include newly commissioned site-specific works by Jordan Ann Craig, Yunhee Min, Carlos Rosales-Silva, and Memphis-based designer Eso Tolson.
Situated atop a reconstructed bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, the building will also offer six times more free public space than the museum’s current home. The campus will also include a 10,000-square-foot community courtyard, a 50,000-square-foot rooftop art garden, expanded galleries, light-filled education spaces, an outdoor amphitheater, and a pedestrian plaza.
Alongside the opening date, the museum announced that admission will be free in perpetuity for all Shelby County residents, including residents of Memphis and the surrounding area. “Memphis Art Museum will carry Memphis to the world, but it belongs first and foremost to the people of this city,” executive director Zoe Kahr said in a statement.
