A Museum Should Exist at the Heart of a Community
Our nine to twelve exhibitions per year rotate continually so that a visitor will always experience the most current works of art that represent the thinking of the best and the brightest.
Sara Cochran - Interim Director and Curator, SMoCA
Our diverse and exciting programming embraces the worlds of music, literature, dance, performance and film. We create education opportunities for all ages and for all backgrounds and interests. Arizona and world politics, Japanese flower arranging, the science of optics, piñata making and the latest ideas about food production and distribution have all been examined in recent SMoCA community programs.
SMoCA frequently collaborates with institutions and communities both in Arizona and outside of the state. The City of Scottsdale, Arizona State University, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Warhol Foundation, the Graham Foundation and the Tremaine Foundation have all assisted the museum in its creation of exhibitions and programs. Thousands of individuals, business, and groups have also given time, money, ideas and energy to help the Museum grow and prosper over a fifteen year history.
When you enter the Museum you will discover a surprise in the outdoor courtyard: one of the most beautiful James Turrell Skyspaces in the world. Always free for viewing during Museum hours, this space transports visitors to a place of quiet contemplation, a place of introspection. In this space you will remember why you seek art, why you visited SMoCA, why you now treasure a small institution in the middle of an oasis known as Scottsdale.
Visit SMoCA and discover the heart of a community.
Interim Director and Curator, SMoCA
smoca building
SMoCA exterior. Photo: Bill Timmerman
The SMoCA Building
Designed by award-winning architect Will Bruder, SMoCA’s minimalist building (an ingenious renovation of a former movie theater) has four galleries for showcasing changing exhibitions and works from the Museum’s growing permanent collection, along with a fifth multi-use gallery space called the SMoCA Lounge.
The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, a complement to the existing Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts (1975, Bennie Gonzales, architect), was achieved through the adaptation of the adjacent cineplex, which proved to be the perfect scale for the 18,500 square feet of versatile exhibition space.
The very first welcoming sight of the building encourages the opportunity to enter a world of exploration. The stucco theater block is now clothed in an elusive, eggplant/gray palette that relates to the dusky shadows the fading sun leaves on the western ramparts of the McDowell range to the east. The building’s dark, somewhat abstract mass is embraced by an oblong service pod of corrugated and perforated galvanized metal at the west and a softly curved entrance pod of flat-seam galvanized steel at the east. The pods are a friendly nod to the bull-nosed volumes of the neighboring Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. Reflective membranes embody both material heritage of the region and the particular qualities of its sky, changing in time and season, occasionally dissolving into the ether.
Visitors on foot are greeted by the luminous Scrim Wall by James Carpenter Design Associates. Textured glass sheets shudder around a curve; their joinery of dichroic glass spacers forms a vibrant, lantern-like effect around the building. Shimmering light and shifting slices of the spectrum play over the exterior of the celebrated James Turrell Skyspace,Knight Rise.
Because Bruder, Carpenter and Turrell all worked together to create the signature art and architectural volumes that define SMoCA, materials, colors and forms echo throughout the building. In the lobby of the building two dramatic curved walls—one made of frosted glass, the other of dark grey steel—make reference to both the glass Scrim Wall and the elliptical Skyspace.
The four main galleries have the same footprints of the original movie theaters. A new, scored concrete floor, ceilings stripped to expose the joints, and a new, gently curved rear wall that runs across the back of all four galleries define the exhibition spaces. Spare, elegant and straightforward, the exhibition spaces offer the volume and simplicity necessary for the appropriate display of often complex and unexpected contemporary art.
Museum building Architect:
William P. Bruder-Architect, Ltd.
Will Bruder, Rob Gaspard, Tim Christ, Ben Nesbeitt, Saskia Harth, Donna Barry, design team
Client (1999):
Scottsdale Cultural Council (SCC)
Frank Jacobson, President
Robert Knight, SMoCA Director
Ric Alling: Project Manager
Consultants:
Rudow & Berry, Inc Mark Rudow, structural;
Baltes/Valentino Associates, mechanical/electrical;
Lighting Dynamics, lighting design;
Wardin Cockriel & Associates, acoustical;
Construction Consultants, cost consultant;
Howard S. Wright Construction Co., general contractor
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