The Arkansas Arts Center, located in the MacArthur Park section of the Quapaw Quarter Historic District, was created in 1937. In 1959, the future governor of Arkansas, Winthrop Rockefeller and his wife Jeanette, headed a statewide capital campaign and by 1963, the facilities had been enlarged to include five galleries, a 381-seat theater, four studio classrooms, sculpture courtyards and an art library. It also offered temporary art exhibitions, a community theatre, and a school of fine and performing arts.
In 1968, Townsend Wolfe was hired as the director and positive changes began to take shape. The school became a community school for children and adults, and a statewide services program was formed. In 1971, drawings were selected as the collection's primary concentration, recognizing that few museums were collecting unique works on paper. The center continued to develop what is today considered a world-class collection of American and European drawings dating from the sixteenth century to the present. Shortly thereafter, the community theater was transformed to a children's theater, modeled after the Minneapolis Children's Theater. The cast has performed at the Kennedy Center and the Spoleto Festival
In 2000, a major project took place at the museum consisting of the addition of over 30,000 square feet of space and renovation of 12,000 square feet of existing space.
