The Brooks Museum will have a new name when it opens its new Downtown location. Here's why

The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art will have a new name when it opens in its riverfront location in 2025.

The newly constructed 122,000-square-foot Downtown facility will have a simple, direct name, chosen by donors and approved by the museum board: the Memphis Art Museum.

The name was chosen by AutoZone founder Pitt Hyde and his wife, community activist Barbara Hyde, whose Hyde Foundation has contributed $40 million to the $180 million capital campaign to construct the ambitious new museum, which will stretch along Front Street from Union to Monroe, on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi. The Hydes' contributions gave them "naming rights" to the museum.

"Rather than naming it after a person or a thing or whatever, they wanted to give the name back to the city of Memphis," museum executive director Zoe Kahr said. "We have always considered ourselves Memphis' art museum, so we're really excited that this new name allows us to say who we are and what we are."

"This is our city's museum and should be known as such, now and forever," said Barbara Hyde, in a statement issued by the museum. "The museum is only possible because of the tremendous generosity and belief by the people of Memphis. It is our honor to recognize our community in this way..."

Announced Tuesday in a news release from the museum and during a meeting of the City Council's Parks & Environment Committee, the name change means the museum will be without its "Brooks" moniker for the first time in its century-plus history. The institution was founded in 1916 in Overton Park (where it will remain until the Downtown facility opens) as the Brooks Memorial Art Gallery; founder Bessie Vance Brooks named it in memory of her wealthy husband, Samuel H. Brooks, a passionate advocate for a Memphis art museum. The cost of the Beaux Arts-style Georgian marble building in 1916 was $115,000. In 1983, the name was changed to "Memphis Brooks Museum of Art," to better associate the facility with its host city.

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Kahr said the museum's current name is a marketing "challenge."

"'Brooks' doesn't clearly say that we are the city's art museum, and it doesn't distinguish us from other museums in our city and our region," she said. "So often it's very helpful if you're a tourist and you're coming to town and you want to know what to do, you typically think about, 'Oh, I'm going to go to the city art museum.' So this will be really helpful to us as we think about this tourist audience, which is going to be so much more important as we get Downtown." She said tourists "don't currently come in large numbers to Overton Park."

To retain a connection to the past, pieces already in the museum collection will be identified as being part of the "Brooks Legacy Collection."

Largely designed by Herzog & de Meuron, a Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss firm with an impressive résumé of major museum work, the Memphis Art Museum is expected to feature nearly 50 percent more gallery space than its predecessor, and intended to function as the city's riverside "front porch," boosters say, with a free rooftop garden and other public spaces.

Groundbreaking took place in June, following the razing of a fire station that had occupied the place since 1967. Museum officials hope to open the new museum in 2025, or 2026, at the latest.

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The city of Memphis has contributed $30 million to the project. The current Overton Park facility is owned by the city and is operated under an agreement with the museum, which is a private non-profit organization. The new museum facility will be gifted to the city after construction is complete and will be operated under a similar agreement.

“We believe the new Memphis Art Museum will be a catalyst for the development of an even more culturally dynamic downtown landscape,” Mayor-elect Paul Young said in a statement. "My administration will support the creation of this remarkable, world-class facility.”

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis Brooks Museum of Art is changing its name: Here's why