Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block
The Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block connects art to life through meaningful and engaging experiences that inspire discovery, spark creativity, and promote cultural understanding.
Category: 501(c) 3 Organization
Discipline: Visual arts
Program Affiliations: Arts Foundation Grantees
About Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block
TMA connects art to life through meaningful and engaging experiences that inspire discovery, spark creativity, and promote cultural understanding. Founded in 1924, TMA encompasses an entire city block in historic downtown Tucson and is committed to developing quality exhibitions, expanding and diversifying its collection, providing arts education opportunities, and presenting relevant and innovative programs while broadening public access to the arts. TMA is also a leader in community-based curation, and produced the acclaimed Community-Based Curation: A Toolkit for Expanding Narratives and Changing Practices.
The museum features exhibitions of Modern and Contemporary art, Latin American art from ancient to today, Indigenous arts and Art of the American West. A permanent collection of over 10,000 works of art spans continents, centuries, and media. TMA’s campus includes five historic properties, an art education center and research library, the Museum Store, and the highly acclaimed museum restaurant Café a la C’Art. TMA is a private 501(c)(3) charitable arts and education organization. For additional information visit TucsonMuseumofArt.org or call (520) 624-2333.
https://tucsonmuseumofart.org
Installation of Vivamos Siempre Como Hermanos in La Casa Cordova
A partnership with Feng-Feng Yeh and the Chinese Chorizo Project produced an installation entitled Vivamos Siempre Como Hermanos in La Casa Cordova.
La Casa Cordova, built when Tucson was within Mexico’s boundaries, is one of Tucson’s oldest homes. The home is named for Maria Navarrete Cordova, the last inhabitant whose family acquired the home by 1896. The Sonoran Row House changed along with the developing barrio or neighborhood, the heart of Tucson and home to many Mexican, Chinese, Black, Tohono O’odham, and Yoeme (Yaqui) families. This vibrant urban center was leveled in the interest of urban renewal in the 1960-70s. Cordova mounted numerous legal challenges against the City of Tucson to stay in her home, but she was removed in 1972. This installation honors Chinese grocery stores and small businesses that flourished in Tucson prior to urban renewal. A traditional grocery store is recreated in the space, displaying items whose bright labels share quotes and intimate recollections from the families of grocery store owners. It is part of a larger interpretive plan for La Casa Cordova that centers the stories, memories, art, activism, and engagement of current and historic local communities.
TMA's exhibit Divergence of Legacy: Art of the American West in the 21st Century
This community-curated exhibition explores mythic, authentic, and nuanced cultural items, experiences, and artistic practices in conversation with Tucson’s history. Using TMA’s collection along with select loans from the Tia Collection in Santa Fe, the exhibition will offer new understandings of art of the American West, its significance to the past and present, and a broadening of social contexts and traditional conventions. With the inclusion of works of art created between the 1870s and 2024, this exhibition positions the major theme of defiance and reimagination as a necessity for survival and method for transforming and expanding the canon of art of the American West. Throughout the galleries visitors will also encounter a secondary theme of erasure and technology which questions ideas of progress and manifest destiny. Divergence of Legacy: Art of the American West in the 21st Century has been developed through a community-based curatorial framework. We are grateful to the expertise, guidance, and trust of our community curators: Elizabeth Denneau, Dwayne Manuel, Ruben Urrea Moreno, Harrison Preston, Yu Yu Shiratori, Feng-Feng Yeh, and Alisha Vasquez and Rikki Riojas with the Mexican American Heritage and History Museum.
Art-making with Museum as Sanctuary
Museum as Sanctuary is TMA’s art engagement program for refugees, open to both youth and adults. Through partnerships with organizations like the International Rescue Committee and Owl & Panther, TMA educators focus on developing comfort and familiarity so students can engage with art on their own terms. Museum as Sanctuary supports healing, language development, personal expression, and community-building through experiential arts programming.
Explore More Arts Directory Listings
No results found.