It’s somehow been nearly 14 months since the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts reopened in April 2023, and on Tuesday, they unfastened the books and shared some statistics from their inaugural year as a revitalized institution.
First things first: 155,442 guests from 41 Arkansas counties, 48 states and 18 countries visited the museum from April 2023-April 2024, according to the newly released annual report. It’s a new record for attendance, though the previous figures aren’t mentioned, so it’s hard to say by how much.
Depending on how the number is calculated, I would guess it’s an underestimate, given just how easy it is to enter AMFA through doors that don’t immediately spit you out at the welcome desk. I’ve skipped out on snagging an official ticket on at least half of my visits, and I can’t imagine that I’m the only one.
AMFA also reports that it now boasts 5,308 members and that its workforce includes 100 full-time employees, 225 part-time employees, and 129 docents and volunteers.
The report contains financial information as well, with AMFA’s first year of revenue coming out to about $11.2 million — a “67 percent increase” from the roughly $6.7 million the museum made in its last full year operating as the Arkansas Arts Center in 2018. It’s important to note, however, that those figures comprise sources beyond just earned revenue. Here’s the breakdown of contributions during April 2023-April 2024: $3 million from the AMFA Foundation, $2.7 million from development, $2.3 million in earned revenue, and $0.4 million from memberships.
Additionally, expenses for both 2018 and April 2023-April 2024 were comparable to each year’s revenue numbers, with a net surplus of $54,218 for the former and $889 for the latter.
Coupled with the annual report is the announcement that “Rivera’s Paris,” a new Diego Rivera exhibition curated and organized by AMFA, is coming to the museum in 2025. It’ll run from Feb. 7-May 18. Here’s what to expect:
Rivera’s Paris is an exploration of Diego Rivera’s years spent in Europe, where he formed his ideas about art and the world that ultimately would propel him to become the most influential Mexican painter in the 20th century. The exhibition will be groundbreaking—uniting paintings, drawings, and photographs for the first thorough examination of the years surrounding the creation of AMFA’s masterpiece by Diego Rivera—Dos Mujeres (1914).
This exhibition offers a unique glimpse into Rivera’s world, revealing the profound influence of the artists he encountered in Spain and France and his vibrant life in Paris, the art capital of the world. Rivera’s Paris offers deeper insight into Rivera’s artistic evolution and explores his distinctive approach to cubism while examining the work of his contemporaries.
Rivera’s Paris highlights Dos Mujeres as a signature artwork in the AMFA Foundation Collection. The work was gifted in 1955 to the Museum by Abby Rockefeller Mauzé, daughter of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and sister to future Governor Winthrop Rockefeller. The painting was also the first artwork donated to the Museum by a member of the Rockefeller family, which prompted subsequent donations by David Rockefeller, Laurance S. Rockefeller, Winthrop and Jeannette Rockefeller, and collateral descendants.
Dos Mujeres is a double portrait of Rivera’s common-law wife, Angelina Beloff, and their friend and fellow artist, Alma Dolores Bastián (nicknamed Moucha), who together with her husband lived in the same building as Beloff and Rivera at 26, Rue du Départ. Rivera painted Dos Mujeres in 1914 in his apartment-studio, from which “one looked out on the vast sea of rooftops—with their squared and angular rhythm of waves—of nearby warehouses and workshops; the panes would rumble—the rumble of trains—from the Gare Montparnasse.”
Rivera’s most important Cubist painting—and one of his largest—Dos Mujeres was first exhibited in 1914 at the Société des Artistes Indépendents. There, it received extensive coverage in the press, hailing Rivera as the “Champion of Cubism.”
AMFA has secured several key loans representing the full evolution of Rivera’s years in Europe, including an early landscape (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.); a Cubist portrait (Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas); and several later drawings when Rivera returned to naturalism, as evidenced in his tender portrait of his wife, Angelina Beloff (1917, Museum of Modern Art, New York), who is one of the subjects depicted in Dos Mujeres. Additionally, major examples by artists who influenced Rivera: Darío de Regoyos y Valdés, whom Rivera praised as being “a marvelous colorist” (Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas); a monumental painting by Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa (The Hispanic Museum and Library, New York); Jean Metzinger, a vibrant portrait of the artist by Robert Delaunay (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston); and two works by Jacques Lipchitz (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)—who traveled to Spain with Rivera in 1914 to escape the war and later credited him with his own explorations in Cubism. To date, AMFA has secured loans from twelve American museums and several private collections.