The Art of Philip C. Curtis

The Art of Philip C. Curtis has been on view at the Phoenix Art Museum since September 26, 2026, and it's an ongoing exhibition, so you've got plenty of time to catch it. You'll find it in the Ullman Center for the Art of Philip C. Curtis, which is located in the Ballinger Wing. The center itself opened in 2001 as a permanent home for his work, so this isn't a temporary pop-up—it's where his art lives.

If you aren't familiar with him, Philip C. Curtis (1907–2000) is one of Arizona's most historically significant artists. He was born in Jackson, Michigan, and studied at Albion College, the University of Michigan, and the School of Fine Arts at Yale. Later, the Works Progress Administration appointed him assistant supervisor of mural paintings in New York. In 1937, the WPA's Federal Art Project sent him to Phoenix to establish the state's first art center, the Phoenix Art Center, which became the Phoenix Art Museum in 1959. He left in 1939 to help found the Des Moines Art Center, then returned in 1947 to settle in Scottsdale, where he lived and worked until he died.

Curtis was a museum administrator and arts advocate as well as a painter, and he drew on the Arizona desert through the lens of magic realism. He filled the landscape with circus performers, musicians, and elegant figures in Victorian costume. His work has remained relatively little known outside the region, which is why the Ullman Center exists—to give it a permanent place here in Phoenix. The exhibition is open and ongoing at the Phoenix Art Museum, in the Ballinger Wing.