Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts

Positioned between Little Rock's walkable downtown and MacArthur Park, the museum had long been disconnected from both. As the museum underwent renovation, SCAPE reimagined its 11-acre landscape as a verdant neighborhood park, seamlessly knit into its surrounding context and vital to everyday life in Little Rock. Today, the landscape reaches out from two new welcoming entrances, drawing the community into an inclusive cultural space while bringing the textured character of the park into the museum.

To the south, new pathways weave directly into MacArthur Park. A series of petal-shaped stormwater gardens extend the museum’s architectural language outdoors; as stormwater runs off the building’s iconic folded-plate roof, the petals capture and direct the water. Water-tolerant perennials and native trees, including a Bald Cypress Grove, filter the water and support insect and bird populations.

To the north, the Courtyard Entrance opens to the surrounding neighborhood through the redesigned Crescent Drive and Crescent Park, creating an accessible and iconic pedestrian arrival. Visitors pass through a stone plaza into an open-air courtyard where dynamic seatwalls weave through the space, inviting the public to rest, reflect, and engage with the original 1937 facade and a sculpture by Henry Moore.

The new design also incorporates opportunities for art appreciation across the grounds, including an expanded open-air sculpture collection, art production space, and flexible lawns for public events and performances.

With over 2,200 linear feet of added paths and 250 new trees, the design celebrates the state’s renowned biodiversity and geology—the low oak savannas to the northeast, the bands of stone in the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains, and the wetlands of Bayou Bartholomew. The new landscape and museum take great care to preserve the Park’s existing mature oak canopy, while planning for long-term succession of these species over time.