Missoula Audio Tour: Public Art, Murals, and Community Stories

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Missoula Audio Tour: Public Art, Murals, and Community Stories

By VoiceMap Audio Tours

Free cancellation available

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Features

Free cancellation available
1h 45m
Mobile voucher
Instant confirmation

Overview

Missoula has been building its public art scene for decades, and the results are everywhere you look. On this self-guided audio tour, you'll trace how railway history, Indigenous heritage, and community-driven creativity shaped a city that treats its streets and alleys as galleries. The tour starts outside the car park on Main Street, beside Cattin' Around, a ferrous cement alley cat that's survived football rivalries and become one of downtown's most beloved sculptures. You'll step into a commissioned alley mural project where four artists from underserved communities responded to the theme of Feeling Welcome, with work rooted in Filipino, Indigenous, Romanian, and Shoshone-Bannock traditions. The tour ends at Radius Gallery on Higgins Avenue, voted Montana's Best Art Gallery two years running and known for its ceramics and contemporary Indigenous art.

Activity location

Missoula Parking Commission
- 128 West Main Street
- 59802, Missoula, Montana, United States

Meeting/Redemption Point

Missoula Parking Commission
- 128 West Main Street
- 59802, Missoula, Montana, United States

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Missoula Audio Tour Public Art, Murals, and Community Stories in English

1h 45m
Opening hours: Tue 12:00 am-11:59 pm
English

Travellers

Language options: English

Price details

NZ$33.82 x 1 AdultNZ$33.82

Total

What's included, what's not

Lifetime access to this tour in English before your booking date and after it
Offline access to audio, maps, and geodata
Flexibility to explore at your own pace with a self-guided GPS tour
App for Android and iOS
Directions to the starting point so that when you’re in the right place, the tour will start
Smartphone and headphones
Transport
Food and drink
Personal expenses for admission fees not included during the tour

Know before you book

Wheelchair accessible
Infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller
Service animals allowed
Public transport options are available nearby
Transport options are wheelchair accessible
All areas and surfaces are wheelchair accessible
Suitable for all physical fitness levels

Activity itinerary

Zootown Arts Community Center / ZACC (Pass by)

Stand before the ZACC's signature building, home to the hyper-realistic Studebaker Mural that floats high on its exterior wall — a piece of mid-century Americana so precisely rendered that most passersby have walked beneath it for years without looking up. Step inside to discover a community arts hub that has been offering studio space, classes, and exhibition opportunities to Missoula artists of every background since the city decided its creative life deserved a permanent home.

Missoula County Justice Court (Pass by)

Pause at the stately 1910 courthouse anchoring the civic heart of city centre Missoula, its neoclassical facade a deliberate statement of permanence and public authority in a city that was barely a generation removed from its frontier origins. Find the Veterans Memorial on the grounds, dedicated in 1921 with funds raised by the Missoula community to honour the men and women who had served in the First World War.

Crossings (Pass by)

Stop before the four giant red X's rising in front of the 1901 Northern Pacific Depot, a bold public artwork that transforms the railway crossing symbol into a monument to the industry that built this city. Consider how the depot behind them once connected Missoula to the wider world, and how a simple graphic mark can carry the full weight of a community's economic history.

Missoula Art Museum (Pass by)

Enter the elegant Carnegie Library building that a determined group of Missoula women lobbied into existence in 1882, now reimagined as one of Montana's most vital contemporary art spaces. Explore the galleries where regional and Indigenous artists are given serious curatorial attention, in a building whose own history as a hard-won community institution makes it a fitting home for art that challenges and provokes.

Radius Gallery (Pass by)

Browse the airy, carefully curated rooms of Montana's most celebrated contemporary gallery, voted the state's best two years running for its commitment to ceramics, sculpture, and contemporary Indigenous work. Notice how Radius has built a reputation not just for the quality of what it shows, but for the seriousness with which it treats its artists — a standard that has made Higgins Avenue a destination for collectors well beyond Montana.

Artists' Shop gallery of art & fine craft (Pass by)

Step into this long-running cooperative where Missoula artists sell their own work directly, a model that keeps the money in the community and puts the makers right behind the counter. Browse the shelves of ceramics, prints, jewellery, and textiles and appreciate a retail space where every object has a name and a storey attached to it.

The Florence Building (Pass by)

Look up at one of city centre Missoula's most graceful early 20th-century buildings, its terracotta details and arched windows a reminder of the civic ambition that accompanied the railway boom years. Step inside to discover the art installations woven through the renovated Missoula Mercantile spaces, including the remarkable 44-star American flag uncovered inside the walls during renovation.

Missoula Makers Collective (Pass by)

Explore this creative workspace where makers, craftspeople, and artists share tools, skills, and the particular energy that comes from building things with your hands in the company of others. Learn how the collective fits into Missoula's broader tradition of community-driven creativity, a tradition that produced this tour's murals, galleries, and public sculptures long before anyone called it a scene.

Dana Gallery (Pass by)

Admire the work on display at one of Missoula's most established fine art galleries, known for its representation of serious Western and landscape painters who bring the extraordinary light and terrain of Montana to canvas with genuine artistic rigour. Walk the rooms and notice how the tradition of painting this landscape has evolved from romantic documentation into something more searching and contemporary.

Montana Museum of Art and Culture (Pass by)

Finish your tour at the university's flagship art institution, whose permanent collection of nearly 10,000 works spans centuries and continents and represents one of the most significant cultural holdings in the northern Rockies. Wander galleries where European masters, American modernists, and contemporary Indigenous artists share wall space, a range that reflects the genuine breadth of a collection built by a public university that takes its cultural mission seriously.

Location

Activity location

Missoula Parking Commission
- 128 West Main Street
- 59802, Missoula, Montana, United States

Meeting/Redemption Point

Missoula Parking Commission
- 128 West Main Street
- 59802, Missoula, Montana, United States

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