Where to Actually See Art in the Valley

People ask me this constantly, usually not long after moving here, and often with a slight apology in their voice as though the Valley might not have much.

It has a great deal. Here is where I would actually send you.

Any Thursday, all year

The ArtWalk in Old Town Scottsdale, seven to nine in the evening. It has run every Thursday since 1975, which makes it the longest continuously running art walk in the country, and it passed fifty years last year.

The Arts District runs along Main Street between Scottsdale Road and Goldwater, and up Marshall Way north of Indian School. Park once and walk. It costs nothing and it is the single easiest way to see what is actually being made and sold here.

The museums

Western Spirit, Scottsdale's Museum of the West, sits right in the district and was named the number one Western museum in the country by True West in 2023. It is much better than people expect who think they are not interested in Western art.

The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art is a short walk away and gives you the other end of the conversation entirely.

January through March

Celebration of Fine Art, which has run since 1991. A hundred artists in forty thousand square feet of working studios under a tent, for ten weeks.

What makes it worth your time is that the artists are there working. You can watch someone paint and then talk to them about it, which is a rare thing and genuinely more interesting than looking at finished work on a wall.

February and March

The Waterfront Fine Art and Wine Festival in early February, which is a pleasant way to spend a Saturday.

Then Scottsdale Art Week in March at WestWorld, which has grown quickly. It drew about fourteen thousand people in its first year and went from 106 galleries to 120 in a single year. This is the one to plan around if you only do one thing.

April, if you want to see the market itself

The Scottsdale Art Auction. This April it cleared $16.5 million across a single weekend, with 97 percent of lots selling and thirty new artist records set.

You do not have to bid to attend a preview, and watching a real auction is an education in what this market actually values.

November

Canal Convergence on the Scottsdale Waterfront, with large scale light installations along the water. It is free, it is family friendly, and it is a completely different register from everything else on this list.

And an hour and a half north

Sedona has more than eighty galleries and a First Friday gallery tour every month. Worth a day trip and worth timing against the first Friday if you can.

If any of it makes you curious about what is being made here right now, the Sands of Time collection is online, and the Collector's Circle sees new work before anyone else. But go stand in front of something in person first. It is not the same on a screen.

Warmly,

Dani