Highlights

Phoenix Art Museum opens Colorwear: A Kaleidoscope of Fashion on April 15, drawing on its 9,000-object holdings to mark the 60th anniversary of the institution's fashion collection — one of the largest continuously collecting fashion programs at any American museum.

Installed in the Kelly Ellman Fashion Galleries, the exhibition arranges ensembles and accessories across a runway of vibrant hues, tracing how designers including Hubert de Givenchy, Olivier Lapidus, Tina Leser, and Giorgio di Sant'Angelo have used color as a primary creative tool. Alongside gowns and dresses, the show surfaces smaller objects from the collection: Judith Leiber pillboxes encased in multihued crystals, psychedelic scarves, and shoes that, per the museum's release, evoke the golden tones of an Egyptian burial or the bold explosion of graffiti paint.

The exhibition is curated by Helen Jean, the Jacquie Dorrance Curator of Fashion, and Summer Rye, Fashion Curatorial Assistant and ACI Liaison. Funding comes from Jacquie and Bennett Dorrance and Arizona Costume Institute, with all fashion exhibitions at PhxArt underwritten by the Kelly Ellman Fashion Endowment Fund and the Thomas Carlton Rogers II Fashion Exhibition Fund. The broader exhibition program is underwritten by the Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition Excellence Fund, founded by The Opatrny Family Foundation, with additional major support from Joan Cremin.

The museum's fashion collection dates to 1966, when the Arizona Costume Institute was founded to support acquisition and preservation of garments and accessories of historical and aesthetic significance. The collection now spans the 18th century through the present and includes four special archives: Paper Dress, the Geoffrey Beene Archive, the Emphatics Archive, and the Ann Bonfoey Taylor Archive.

Colorwear will rotate ensembles throughout its run and include the unveiling of a new commission. A fall 2026 catalogue — Colorwear: A Kaleidoscope of Fashion, published by Scala Arts Publishers, Inc. — will feature contributions from fashion historians and Dressed: The History of Fashion podcast hosts April Calahan and Cassidy Zachary.

Public programming includes a curator-led tour with Helen Jean on May 28, 2026, and a June 3 book club event at which PhxArt Archivist Aspen Reynolds will discuss collections and object preservation. The exhibition runs through August 15, 2027; general admission applies, with voluntary-donation entry available Wednesdays from 3 to 8 p.m., made possible by SRP and the City of Phoenix.

Around the web

Minimal public conversation detected. One Reddit post mentions a symposium event at the museum this weekend with modest engagement. Overall discussion volume is very low, suggesting limited organic awareness of the exhibition announcement at this early stage.

Public discussion (links to original posts):

Sources

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  1. phxart.org retrieved 2026-05-06T08:11:27.529666+00:00

Authored by lily_ortega. Drafted by AI from primary-source material under our beat-specific editorial guides; reviewed by humans before publish under our five-gate process. Sources retrieved at 2026-05-06T08:11:27.529666+00:00. Every claim traces to a source.