Wichita Art Museum, Wichita

The Wichita Art Museum is an art museum established in 1915, when Louise Murdock’s Will which created a trust to start the Roland P. Murdock Collection of art in memory of her husband. The trust would purchase art for the City of Wichita by “American painters, potters, sculptors, and textile weavers.”

The museum opened in 1935 with art borrowed from other museums. The first work in the Murdock Collection was purchased in 1939. Mrs. Murdock’s friend, Elizabeth Stubblefield Navas, selected and purchased works of American art for the Murdock Collection until 1962. The building was enlarged with a new lobby and two new wings in 1963. In 1964, a foundation was established for the purpose of raising funds for new acquisitions. In the 1970s, the city built a new and larger climate controlled facility. In 2003, the museum finished another expansion project giving the building 115,000 total square feet.