Comments (0) BEST URBAN OASIS - 2007

Sculpture Garden
at the Phoenix Art Museum

We seek refuge, and often. We do it through music, through food and drink, and other forms of escape that we'll leave to your imagination. But working in downtown Phoenix as we do, refuge just hasn't been much of an option, unless you count hunkering down at the now-smokeless bar at Durant's.A ways south on Central from Durant's is just what the refuge doc ordered, and at an art museum, no less. With the kind financial bump of the Dorrance Family Foundation, the gloriously reconfigured museum recently finished installation of a one-acre, secure outdoor garden, replete with 140 mature trees — we love the Arizona ash and willow acacia — and a bunch of thought-provoking sculptures. With plenty of spots to just sit and take it all (or nothing) in, it's a delightful urban haven. Even stepping out onto Central, where light-rail construction continues, doesn't seem so bad in the afterglow.