Museum Arizona State University Art Museum
ASU Campus · Tempe
One of the finest university art museums in the Southwest, with over 5,000 works spanning American art, craft, Latin American art, and groundbreaking contemporary installations.
Art Galleries in Tempe
Tempe is home to Arizona State University's main campus, and the creative energy of one of the largest universities in the United States gives the city's art scene a distinctive character - more experimental, more culturally diverse, and more engaged with the contemporary art world than any other city in the East Valley. The ASU Art Museum is one of the most ambitious university art museums in the Southwest, with a strong collection of contemporary American craft and an exhibition program that regularly presents work of national significance. Mill Avenue and the surrounding downtown district support independent galleries, artist studios, and creative businesses that draw from both the university community and the broader Phoenix metropolitan area.
Museum 
Gallery Eye Lounge Tempe
Tempe · Tempe
An artist-run experimental gallery in the Tempe arts district, presenting boundary-pushing contemporary work from emerging Arizona-based artists across painting, installation, and new media.
Cultural Center Tempe Center for the Arts
Tempe Town Lake · Tempe
A striking lakeside arts complex presenting visual art exhibitions alongside performing arts, with sweeping views of Tempe Town Lake from its award-winning sustainable building.
Where to Stay in Tempe
Find hotels, inns, and vacation rentals near Tempe's galleries and cultural venues.
Search Hotels on Booking.com →
Affiliate link, we may earn a commission at no cost to you.
Tempe and the ASU Art World
Arizona State University's Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts is one of the largest comprehensive design and arts schools in the country, and its presence shapes Tempe's creative culture in fundamental ways. The ASU Art Museum, located in the Nelson Fine Arts Center, presents exhibitions of contemporary and modern art with genuine national significance, including the Ceramics Research Center, which houses one of the world's largest publicly accessible collections of contemporary ceramics. The Gammage Auditorium, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and completed two years after his death, anchors ASU's performing arts programming and is itself one of the most significant works of architecture in the Southwest. The galleries along Mill Avenue serve a young, university-adjacent audience and tend toward contemporary and emerging work. The monthly Art Detour festival in downtown Phoenix draws Tempe's arts community into a broader metropolitan arts circuit. For collectors interested in emerging work by artists at the beginning of their careers, Tempe's university-connected galleries offer opportunities that more established markets cannot match.