Aug, 25, 2026
Media AlertsSpecial Events and Programs
Phoenix Art Museum showcases works by renowned Korean painter Kim Chong Hak; SOUNDCHECK returns with Meat Puppets
PHOENIX (August 25, 2026) – This September, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) presents Kim Chong Hak, Painter of Seoraksan, the first exhibition of works by the South Korean master painter Kim Chong Hak in Arizona. PhxArt kicks off SOUNDCHECK with Meat Puppets. Hear from director David Alvarado after a viewing of the film American Pachuco. Additional event details and ticket links are provided below.
FEATURED EVENTS
Films at PhxArt: American Pachuco with Director David Alvarado + Producer Everett Katigbak
Wednesday, September 2 | 6 p.m.
$10 for Members | $15 for Non-Members
Against political resistance and industry skepticism, Luis Valdez pushed Chicano storytelling from the fields to the film screen, crafting iconic works that challenge, celebrate and expand America’s story. In the 1960s, his El Teatro Campesino performed on flatbed trucks and helped mobilize workers to win the first farmworker union contract. His Zoot Suit was the first Chicano play on Broadway. Despite critical rejection that killed the show, he persevered, creating La Bamba—a blockbuster breakout film that authentically depicted Mexican American life to the world. Now in its 60th year, El Teatro continues to be a beacon for Latino/a creators. American Pachuco is the story of an artist who gave voice to the overlooked and opened pathways for generations. Featuring interviews with Linda Ronstadt, Lou Diamond Phillips, Cheech Marin, Delores Huerta and Edward James Olmos. Winner of both the Audience and Jury awards at the Sundance film festival.
Tickets are available here.
SOUNDCHECK | Meat Puppets
Friday, September 25 | 7 p.m.
$10 for Members | $28 for the public*
*Tickets include all-day access to the Museum
SOUNDCHECK is back. One Friday per month from 7–8 p.m., Phoenix Art Museum turns into a live-music venue for one hour, with unplugged sets, local and regional acts, and art all around you.
Season two of SOUNDCHECK kicks off with Arizona Hall of Fame recipients the Meat Puppets. Formed in Phoenix in the early 1980s, the Meat Puppets turned punk’s creative freedom loose on country, psychedelia and Southwestern desert weirdness, making landmark albums like “Meat Puppets II” and “Up on the Sun” before Kurt Cobain brought brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood onstage for Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged and introduced them to a generation. More than 40 years later, the founding trio is back together, joined by keyboardist Ron Stabinsky and guitarist Elmo Kirkwood. As drummer Derrick Bostrom puts it, “This doesn’t feel like an oldies act. It feels like the culmination.”
Tickets are available here.
SOUNDCHECK is made possible through the generosity of Presenting Sponsor Men’s Arts Council, with additional support from the Angela and Leonard Singer Endowment for the Performing Arts.
Kids Day at PhxArt
Sunday, September 13 | Noon – 5 p.m.
Free for Members | Included with general admission
Designed for visitors of all ages, Kids Day at PhxArt features interactive in-gallery art-making, Storytime and dynamic performances that connect participants with PhxArt’s collection and special exhibitions. This September, Kids Day celebrates the 60th anniversary of Phoenix Art Museum’s fashion collection. Explore the current fashion exhibition COLORWEAR: A Kaleidoscope of Fashion and find your signature look.
- Noon–5 p.m. | Design your own personal style with a mix and match wardrobe craft
- Noon–5 p.m. | Accessorize with a custom-made button
- Noon–5 p.m. | Strike a pose in our fashion photobooth with photographer Kenzie Rich
- Noon–5 p.m. | Learn about ACI and PhxArt’s newest publication, COLORWEAR: A Kaleidoscope of Fashion
- 1:30–2 p.m. | Join us for a reading of Elmer by David McKee
- 2–2:45 p.m. | The galleries come alive with a performance by The Phoenix Symphony
Tickets are available here. All art-engagement programming is included free with general admission.
Kids Day is made possible by Desert Financial Credit Union, the Angela and Leonard Singer Endowment for Performing Arts, The Discount Tire Endowment for Children’s Art Programs and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs.
Summer Symphony Series
Free for Members | Included with general admission
The Phoenix Symphony is coming to PhxArt for two more performances this summer. Catch them on select Sundays during Kids Day and on select Wednesday evenings throughout the season and experience the Museum in a whole new way.
- Sunday, September 13 at 2 – 2:45 p.m.
- Wednesday, September 16 at 5 – 5:30 p.m.*
*Free-access times. Performances are included with general admission. Purchase tickets here.
OPENING SOON
Kim Chong Hak, Painter of Seoraksan
Opening September 9, 2026
Kim Chong Hak, Painter of Seoraksan is the first exhibition of works by the South Korean master painter Kim Chong Hak in Arizona. It features more than 80 paintings, drawings and sketches that span the arc of Kim’s long career, highlighting an aspect of Korean art from the late 20th century that is little known outside of South Korea. Born in Sinuji, Korea, in 1937, Kim Chong Hak first worked as an abstract painter in the 1960s and ultimately rejected the adoption of Western-style abstraction. In the late 1970s, he settled in Gangwon Province in eastern South Korea and home of Mount Seorak—the highest peak in the country’s Taebaek mountain range. There, he sought out an alternative artistic discourse, moving away from the monochromatic painting popular in Korea of the time and toward his own unabashedly expressive style.
Kim Chong-Hak, Painter of Seoraksan is organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and curated by Michael Rooks, Wieland Family Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Lead sponsorship of the publication is provided by Johyun Gallery and the Korea Foundation. Generous support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by Su and Al Longman, Gallery Hyundai and the Yang Won Sun Foundation.
The presentation of Kim Chong-Hak, Painter of Seoraksan at Phoenix Art Museum is coordinated by Colin Pearson, Curator of Asian Art, and made possible by the generous support of Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust Exhibition Endowment Fund, Hyunsook Jeanne Sours, and E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation. In-kind support provided by Kimpton Hotel Palomar Phoenix. Contemporary art exhibitions and projects are made possible in part by the Rob Walton, Jordan Rose, and Rose Law Group Fund for Contemporary Art. All exhibitions at Phoenix Art Museum are underwritten by the Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition Excellence Fund, founded by The Opatrny Family Foundation with additional major support provided by Joan Cremin.
NEW ON VIEW
The Way We Came: A Century of Indigenous Art from the William P. Healey Collection
Through July 11, 2027
The Way We Came: A Century of Indigenous Art from the William P. Healey Collection examines modernity in Native American art and demonstrates how Indigenous artists have sustained, adapted and reimagined cultural knowledge across a century. The exhibition considers how visual culture was transmitted through familial lines of artists, artists’ collectives and pedagogical lineages, including the complex legacies of Native boarding schools. It also explores the power of storytelling, examining how works rooted in ceremony demonstrate continuity and resistance, while tracing evolving relationships to abstraction and modernism. Featured artists include Fritz Scholder, T. C. Cannon, Kay WalkingStick, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Emmi Whitehorse, Quincy Tahoma and more.
The Way We Came: A Century of Indigenous Art: The William P. Healey Collection at Phoenix Art Museum is organized by Phoenix Art Museum and is curated by JoAnna Reyes, PhD, Adjunct Curator for Art of the Americas and guest curator Tony Abeyta (Navajo). All exhibitions at Phoenix Art Museum are underwritten by the Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition Excellence Fund, founded by The Opatrny Family Foundation with additional major support provided by Joan Cremin.
CLOSING SOON
Flowers of the Punjab: Textiles of India and Beyond
Closing September 6, 2026
Discover traditional textiles from the Punjab region of northwestern India, the birthplace of Sikhism. At the heart of the display is the Phulkari, a richly embroidered garment created by a girl’s female family members starting from her birth and completed by her marriage.
Flowers of the Punjab: Textiles of India and Beyond is organized by Phoenix Art Museum. It is curated by Colin Pearson, Curator of Asian Art, and made possible through the generosity of The Sikh Heritage Fund. All exhibitions at Phoenix Art Museum are underwritten by the Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition Excellence Fund, founded by The Opatrny Family Foundation, with additional major support provided by Joan Cremin.
Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists from Japan
Closing September 13, 2026
Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists from Japan celebrates the originality and virtuosity of 36 women artists who have explored sculptural expression outside the traditional field of Japanese studio ceramics since the 1970s. The exhibition’s 40 avant-garde works are drawn from the Horvitz Collection, considered one of the leading collections of Japanese contemporary ceramics outside of Japan, and explore wide-ranging content and motifs, including the human body, geology, flora and fantastical abstract forms.
Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists from Japan is organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz Collection and curated by Janice Katz, Roger L. Weston Curator of Japanese Art. Its presentation at Phoenix Art Museum is coordinated by Colin Pearson, Curator of Asian Art. Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists from Japan is made possible by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and Katharine and Nicholas J. Feduska, M.D. Contemporary art exhibitions and projects are made possible in part by the Rob Walton, Jordan Rose, and Rose Law Group Fund for Contemporary Art. All exhibitions at Phoenix Art Museum are underwritten by the Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition Excellence Fund, founded by The Opatrny Family Foundation with additional major support provided by Joan Cremin.
For a full list of exhibitions on view now at Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org/art/exhibitions/.
OTHER SEPTEMBER EVENTS
PhxArt Book Club: Temple of Love by Rick Owens
Wednesday, September 2 | 6:30 p.m.
Free event
Location: The Lemon Art Research Library, located inside the Museum Administration Building
For more information, click here.
Storytime
Thursday, September 3 | 10:30 a.m.
Free for Members | Included with general admission
For more information, click here.
Storytime is made possible by First Things First, the Angela and Leonard Singer Endowment for Performing Arts, The Discount Tire Endowment for Children’s Art Programs and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs.
Object of the Month: Celebration from the Underworld, Tony Abeyta
September 3, 5, 17, 24 | 11:30 a.m.
Free for Members | Included with general admission
For more information, click here.
Object of the Month is made possible by CMI Gold & Silver.
Friday, September 4 | 5 – 8 p.m.
Free general admission
Tickets are available here.
First Friday at PhxArt is made possible through the generosity of APS with additional support from Arizona Community Foundation.
Saturday, September 5, 12, 19, 26 | 11 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Free for Members | Included with general admission
For more information, click here.
Create Playdate is made possible by The Discount Tire Endowment for Children’s Art Programs, and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs.
In Conversation: 2025 Lehmann Emerging Artists
Wednesday, September 23 | 6:30 p.m.
Free during Pay What You Wish Wednesday
Tickets are available here.
Puppet Workshop with Chris Ignacio
Saturday, September 26 |10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
$40 for Members | $50 for Non-Members
Capacity is limited.
Tickets are available here.
National Theatre Live: Mrs. Warren’s Profession
Sunday, September 27 | 1 p.m.
$15 for Members | $20 for general public
Tickets are available here.
National Theatre Live screenings are made possible in part by the Angela and Leonard Singer Endowment for Performing Arts.
Films at PhxArt: The Social Network
Wednesday, September 30 | 6 p.m.
Free for Members | $10 for general public
Tickets are available here.
OTHER DISCOUNTED + FREE-ACCESS PROGRAMS
Pay-What-You-Wish Wednesdays
Every Wednesday | 3 – 8 p.m.
Voluntary-donation general admission
Free for Museum Members | $10 special exhibition
Pay-What-You-Wish Wednesdays are made possible by SRP and City of Phoenix, with additional support from Arizona Community Foundation.
Active-duty U.S. military personnel and their families enjoy free admission from Armed Forces Day (May 16, 2026) through Labor Day (September 7, 2026) as part of the Blue Star Museums program.
About Phoenix Art Museum
Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) has engaged millions of visitors with the art of our region and world. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, PhxArt creates spaces of exchange and belonging for all audiences through dynamic exhibitions, collections, and experiences with art. Each year, 300,000 guests on average engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 21,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern, and contemporary art and fashion design, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. PhxArt also presents live performances, outstanding examples of global cinema, arts-education programs and workshops, a monthly live-music series, and more for the community. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.
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