The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts was founded in 1930 by a group of local artists and patrons under the name of the “Alabama Society of Fine Arts.” The Museum’s home for the first twenty-nine years was the former Lawrence Street School at the corner of High and Lawrence Streets in downtown Montgomery.

Between 1930 and 1959, under the governance of the Museum Association, (a private board of trustees) the Museum's activities were supported primarily through memberships and private donations. In 1960, the Museum became a department of the City of Montgomery and, in 1983, Montgomery County joined the City to support the Museum as an equal partner, sharing the institution’s operating costs. Since 1930, the budget of the Museum has grown from one thousand dollars per annum to more than three million dollars. The staff has increased from a small volunteer force to over fifty full and part-time employees.

Until 1971, the Museum’s collections included historical objects, archeological artifacts and art. In that year, the focus of the Museum’s collections was redefined and the collecting and preservation of art became the focus of the Museum’s mission.

Education has been an integral part of the Museum’s program throughout its history. The Museum originally had an art school directed by Wetumpka artist J. Kelly Fitzpatrick until his death in 1953. A Department of Education was created in 1960 to facilitate the planning of tours for school children, workshops, outreach programs, puppet shows, films, lectures and, most recently, the ARTWORKS participatory learning gallery.

Between 1959 and 1988, the Museum shared the building at 440 South McDonough Street with the City-County Public Library. The City and the Museum’s Board of Trustees joined forces to raise more than six million dollars for a new Museum building, to be constructed in the Wynton M. Blount Cultural Park adjacent to the Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s Carolyn Blount Theatre.

The Museum opened in the Wynton M. Blount Cultural Park on September 18, 1988. Since that time, over one million visitors have enjoyed the wide range of exhibitions and programs offered throughout the year. An unusually successful partnership of public and private commitment to the arts in Montgomery, Alabama has assured the future of one of the South’s premier cultural institutions.