Best Of Tucson®

Best Museum

Tucson Museum of Art

READERS' PICK: Did you ever have to make up your mind? Pick up with one and leave the other behind? It's not often easy, and it's not often kind, but we gotta overrule the readers in this category this year. Y'all picked the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, a commendable, admirable, wonderful place, a true golden oldie that just celebrated its 50 years of service to Tucson and the world. But, dear readers, our beloved ASDM does not fall into the arts and culture category. So we gotta leave it behind and pick up with your second choice: the Tucson Museum of Art, which nicely weathered a difficult year sans a director, since Bob Yassin left at November's end. The museum has been drawing record crowds to its lovely installation of pre-Colombian and Hispanic art in the old Stevens-Duffield House, the masterwork of curator Joanna Stuhr, and still not slouching on the contemporary art side, either, the bailiwick of curator Julie Sasse. Her curatorial contributions included a Directions show by Herb Stratford, who builds mysterious sculptures out of found objects and drapes them with hot wax. Hey! Just like the record companies used to do ...