Arlington Museum of Art

The Arlington Museum of Art is a non-collecting art museum located on Main Street in downtown Arlington, Texas. It hosts art exhibitions year-round and also offers art-related children's classes, adult workshops, lectures, and film screenings. It is also home to a basement music studio called Zig Productions.

The museum's roots date back to the Arlington Art Association's founding in 1952. It was founded by Howard and Arista Joyner, who respectively established the Art Department at the University of Texas at Arlington and was the first art teacher at Arlington High School. The association promoted art in Arlington by sponsoring juried art exhibits, shows featuring local artists, art auctions benefiting scholarships for local high school students, and creating a savings fund to purchase a building to serve as its permanent home. In 1986, the Arlington Art Association bought the former J. C. Penney store on Main Street in downtown Arlington, which it remodeled extensively and moved into in 1989 after incorporating as the Arlington Museum of Art. The first show at the museum opened in May 1990 and featured contemporary art.

In 1991, Joan Davidow was hired as the full-time director of the museum. Under her tenure, which lasted until September 2000, she focused the museum's curated exhibitions on Texas contemporary art. In February 2001, Anne Allen was hired as the new director of the museum, having previously served in the same capacity at The Old Jail Art Center in Albany, Texas. During the six years of her tenure, she added new programs such as artist lectures and gallery talks to the museum's calendar of exhibitions. The museum was reorganized in 2012 due to its financial needs and the impact of a week economy, and former board member Chris Hightower was selected as its new director. Under his tenure, the museum has broadened its scope beyond contemporary art and now features "historically significant and culturally important exhibitions". The museum has also begun supporting its exhibitions with accompanying programming, funding its exhibitions through grants, and renting its facilities for outside events.

The Arlington Museum of Art has hosted traveling exhibitions, including those featuring photography by Ansel Adams, art by Salvador Dalí, Milton H. Greene's photographs of Marilyn Monroe, Harlem Renaissance artwork (including works by Richmond Barthé, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, and Charles White), Utagawa Hiroshige's woodblock prints, Vivian Maier's street photography, and Pablo Picasso's ceramics. It has also featured exhibitions of edible art sculptures and famous film costumes including those of Johnny Depp from Pirates of the Caribbean and Emmy Rossum from The Phantom of The Opera.