Museum Spotlight: Arizona State University Art Museum
With our summer cycle in full swing, we are pleased to take a moment to revisit our ongoing museum spotlight series celebrating our exceptional institutional partners. This week we’re taking a closer look at the Arizona State University Art Museum (ASU Art Museum) in Tempe, Arizona. An extension of the expansive Arizona State University system, “one university in many places” serving 150,000 learners across its campuses and online, the ASU Art Museum is committed to serving its diverse communities as it foregrounds access, social impact, and teaching and learning to provide “Arte para todos. Art for all.”
Working closely with the team at the ASU Art Museum over the past year, I have been privileged to learn about and support some of the many great initiatives they are undertaking as an institution to tell fuller, more inclusive narratives through art. One exceptional example of this is the Museum’s Black Arts & Culture Council initiative. Responding directly to disparities in representation, the Council was founded in 2023 with a dedicated focus on the growth of collection works, exhibitions, and programming by Black artists. Museum Exchange has been thrilled to help the ASU Art Museum bring new works into their collections to advance this meaningful initiative, including works by such prominent artists as Hugo McCloud (American, b. 1980).
Lourdes Grobet, Beso a Virginia, 1983, gelatin silver print, 8 x 10 inches. Collection of Arizona State University Art Museum; Gift of Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), New York.
Further embodying the University’s charter, which affirms, “We are measured not by whom we exclude, but rather by whom we include and how they succeed,” the ASU Art Museum maintains its steadfast commitment to representation while also challenging monolithic narratives. With Museum Exchange, the ASU Art Museum has been able to build on their historical strengths in art from Latin American and Latinx artists, bringing in works like Beso a Virginia (1983) by Lourdes Grobet (Mexican, 1940-2022) with the potential to deepen an exploration of the multiplicities of Mexican identities in dialogue with the work of existing collection artists like Carmen Lomas Garza (Chicana, b. 1948) and Diego Rivera (Mexican, 1886–1957). Notably, in 2023, the ASU Art Museum was one of ten institutions awarded a $500,000 grant from Advancing Latinx Art in Museums (ALAM) to continue bolstering their significant Latinx art curatorial efforts.
These are just two of the ways that we’ve been able to support the museum in staying centered on its purpose. Senior Curator Alana Hernandez expands on the impact of the partnership:
As a museum situated within the largest public research university in the country, the ASU Art Museum is dedicated to collecting, commissioning, documenting, and caring for important works of art to honor people and their stories. Since partnering with Museum Exchange, we have brought significant works by artists like Purvis Young, Lourdes Grobet, and Alex Bradley Cohen into the museum’s collection, allowing us to tell more comprehensive stories of our place. These generous gifts directly support our mission and vision to center art and artists in the service of community well-being and social good.
Throughout the course of our collaboration, the ASU Art Museum’s devotion to representing a plurality of voices and perspectives has been unmistakable. It’s truly an honor to be able to support a small facet of their important work as they shape the future of the museum field.
Alex Bradley Cohen, Liz Harmey, 2017, oil on canvas, 47 x 35 inches. Collection of Arizona State University Art Museum; Gift of John Friedman.
