Desert Perspectives

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) presents “Desert Perspectives,” a year-long, collection-centered exhibition drawing from artwork in the museum’s permanent collection, alongside loans and new commissions, opening on September 12.  

The exhibition brings together a multigeneration group of artists, working in or regionally connected to the Southwest, whose practices engage the desert not only as a physical landscape but as a layered site of cultural and ecological significance. 

“Desert Perspectives” unfolds through three sequential rotations, each introducing a new perspective lens through works from the collection. A core group of loaned and commissioned works will remain on view throughout the exhibition, creating an ongoing dialogue across a lineage of historical and contemporary approaches to the region. Conceptually, the rotating structure mirrors the exhibition’s understanding of the desert as an environment continually shaped, while inviting visitors to consider how narratives of place shift depending on context, viewpoint and time.  

A central throughline of the exhibition is understanding that the desert is not static. Artistic and cultural narratives have long shaped how the landscape is imagined and understood, while ecological realities and human presence continue to transform it in ways that are both subtle and irreversible. In this sense, the desert, much like all landscapes, becomes a record of challenged imaginaries, intersecting histories and ongoing negotiations.