A community center since 1959, it hosts festivals, live performances, independent art films and educational programs year-round.

In 1915, the club purchased Carl Oscar Borg's painting Egyptian Evening for US$125 and presented it to the city of Phoenix to begin a community art collection.

In 1925, the State Fair Committee expanded its community responsibilities and formed the Phoenix Fine Arts Association.

Its success led to the creation in 1940 of the Civic Center Association, which set about raising funds and planning a building on a 6.5-acre plot donated by the heirs of Adolphus Clay Bartlett.

To coordinate this endeavor, the Phoenix Fine Arts Association named a new board of trustees in 1952 and the museum's first director, Forest M. Hinkhouse, in 1957.

[8] In the last 50 years, the museum has hosted more than 400 exhibitions from all over the world, grown the collection to more than 18,000 works of art, and been visited by millions.

The museum has European paintings by Ubertini, Girolamo Genga, Guercino, Carlo Dolci, Bernardo Strozzi, Marcellus Coffermans, Jacob Cornelisz, Master of Astorga, Bartolomeus Bruyn the Elder, Nicolas Lepicie, Giovanni Piazzetta, Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun, Antoine Vestier, George Romney, Camille Corot, Hippolyte Delpy, Eugène Boudin, Jean-Léon Gérôme (Thumbs Down), Claude Monet (Garden Arches, Giverny), Max Beckmann, Léon Portau, Édouard Vuillard, and Pablo Picasso.

[10] It has American paintings by Gilbert Stuart, Sanford Gifford, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, Marsden Hartley, Stuart Davis, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jonas Lie, Lew Davis, Ernest Blumenschein, Joseph Sharp, Howard Post, and Ed Mell.

[11] It has contemporary art by Yayoi Kusama (You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies),[12] Viola Frey, Donald Martiny[13] Kehinde Wiley, Carlos Amorales (Black Cloud),[14] and Helen Frankenthaler.