Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
4.3(1.2K)google
3.9(172)yelp
Contemporary Art
Overview
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) in the state of Arizona is a museum in the Old Town district of downtown Scottsdale, Arizona. The museum is dedicated to contemporary art, design, and architecture. The Museum has five galleries that house various exhibitions, curated from their growing permanent collection and rotating shows.
Practical Info
MonClosed
TueClosed
Wed11:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Thu11:00 AM – 7:00 PM
Fri11:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Sat11:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Sun11:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Suggested Duration1-2 hours
Best TimeYear-round. As an indoor aesthetic space full of top air conditioning and avant-garde thinking, this is the perfect choice for an immersive cultural-art experience while escaping Scottsdale's outdoor summer heat
Getting ThereLocated in Old Town Scottsdale's central Civic Center Park. You can seamlessly walk to the old town's core, and the museum has huge multi-level completely free public parking garages nearby
Travel Tips
- Known as SMoCA, this is a highly avant-garde contemporary-art palace; the building was converted from an abandoned cinema by a renowned architect, and its minimalist gray exterior walls are renowned in the minimalist-design world
- There's no permanent exhibition here; the entire museum completely changes its world-class top special exhibitions several times a year, covering the most cutting-edge contemporary visual art, digital multimedia installations, and powerful modern sculpture
- Don't miss "Knight Rise," the permanent outdoor installation art meticulously created by master of architectural light and shadow James Turrell—a surreal minimalist space that lets you calmly gaze at Arizona's ever-changing sky
Reviews
Positive
- Although the museum isn't large in scale, the exhibition concepts are very avant-garde and hardcore, fully a match for the big contemporary museums in New York or Los Angeles! James Turrell's 'sky-viewing rock cave' is so healing—you could sit inside for a whole afternoon
- The environment is extremely quiet, upscale, and pure. The museum gift shop has many highly designed independent-designer art books and small items—perfect for artsy young people seeking niche taste
Heads up
- Because the whole museum is very abstract, radical contemporary art and conceptual installations, visitors who prefer traditional European classical oil paintings or realist landscapes may find it a bit hard to understand