The 1,400-mile stretch between Los Angeles and Kansas City was until recently fairly much an artistic dust bowl as far as museums are concerned. Not until 1959 did Phoenix, a man-made oasis in the red, rubble-strewn desert, get its first honest-to-goodness art museum, with a collection valued at $2.6 million.
In fact, as Director Forest Melick Hinkhouse points out, before Phoenix had a museum, "the majority of the inhabitants of the state had never entered a museum or had anything other than a superficial awareness of the visual arts." What was lacking was not the will but the opportunity to view works...
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