Scottsdale’s Civic Center is the most photographed free acreage in the city, and nearly all of those photographs are of one red and blue aluminum word. Robert Indiana’s LOVE deserves its crowd. So do Louise Nevelson’s Windows to the West, George-Ann Tognoni’s The Yearlings, Kana Tanaka’s glass Spirit of Camelback and James Turrell’s Knight Rise, all covered in our public art walking tour. This is the guide to everything else: roughly two dozen works on the campus and the blocks around it that most visitors walk straight past.
All dates, materials and donors below come from Scottsdale Public Art’s collection records. One caution. The 2021–23 renovation took a lot of art into storage, and not all of it came back to the same spot, so a few placements below are as the collection lists them, unconfirmed by us on the ground. Where that’s the case, we say so.
The west entrance: Brown Avenue and the Paseo
Winfield Scott Memorial (George-Ann Tognoni, 2006). At the West Paseo entrance, just east of Tognoni’s better-known The Yearlings and in front of the Little Red Schoolhouse. Winfield Scott stands beside his horse “Old Maud,” with Helen Scott seated sidesaddle, composed from a historic photograph. It was paid for with private donations and the city’s Art in Public Places fund. (The collection gives its address as 7640 E. Main St., which doesn’t match its described spot; go by the description.)
Hidden Histories (Elizabeth Conner, 2006), 3821 N. Brown Ave. Two clusters of oversized icons modeled on the Hispanic nicho, a small shrine of remembrance. Conner, an artist from Washington, interviewed Old Town business owners, and each icon stands for something she learned. The branding iron is the “West’s Most Western Town” brand that George A. Cavalliere, of Cavalliere’s Blacksmith Shop, designed from the slogan, and that the Scottsdale Jaycees used to promote the Parada del Sol. The tire recalls cotton grown around Scottsdale from 1913 through the 1940s and used to make tires. Its tread pattern borrows from Pima, Hohokam and Tohono O’odham baskets and pottery.
The Stable (Joel Coplin, 2006), inside the Noriega Livery building at 3806 N. Brown Ave. A mural of working horses at feed, painted with Old Master techniques. Each horse is based on an animal Coplin knew when he drove a carriage in New York City. “I want to honor the work horses,” he said, “the horses with no papers or trophies.”
Around City Hall
Don Quixote (Alan “Dale” Wright, 1968). Welded steel, the knight on horseback with his lance, in the lagoon southwest of City Hall. Mrs. Dorothy Smith gave it to the city in 1968, the year City Hall opened. It came back after the renovation. Wright (1935–2005), from Portland, Oregon, was part of Scottsdale’s 1970s art scene, and three of his steel pieces are in the city collection. The other two are covered in our public art on the road guide.
Woman and Fish (Abbott Pattison, 1954). A bronze woman spearing a fish. The woman is realistic and the fish is abstract. Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Cummings of Montreal gave it in 1968. Pattison’s work is also in the Whitney and the Art Institute of Chicago. The collection lists it at City Hall.
Mother and Child (John Waddell, cast 1960, acquired 1969). Bronze, cast at a Mexican foundry in the manner of Aristide Maillol and modeled on Waddell’s wife and one of his sons. The boy is held in his mother’s arms but already turning away. Waddell taught at Arizona State from 1957 to 1964. The collection lists it at City Hall.
Mayor Herb Drinkwater and His Dog, Sadie (Clyde “Ross” Morgan, 2003). Just west of City Hall. At 7.5 feet, Herb Drinkwater leans on a fence post in a Stetson, western jacket, jeans, ostrich boots and a bolo tie, his name on the belt buckle. Sadie, the family’s German shepherd, stands at his side. Morgan won a competition for the commission, and hundreds of residents paid for it. The plaque quotes the mayor: “Serving the citizens of Scottsdale is the greatest job in the world.”
The Chaplain (Austin Deuel, 2009). Near the northeast corner of City Hall. A bronze honoring veterans and their chaplains. Before it, the city’s veterans had only a small plaque, too small for ceremonies. The city paid for the siting and veterans raised every dollar for the sculpture.
The Desert’s Garden (Tammi Lynch-Forrest, 2023). Near City Hall, made for the renovation. A mosaic wall more than 40 feet long, built from thousands of handmade high-fired clay tiles, each about two weeks in the making, all installed by the artist. A canal, a trail and a sidewalk stand for the flow of time. Look for pima cotton, citrus, oleander, poppies, Gambel’s quail, an Anna’s hummingbird and a monarch butterfly.
Ambient Landscape (Janet Taylor, 1990). Seven tapestries in two groups on the north and south walls of the Kiva, Bennie Gonzales’s sunken council chamber. Taylor, then an ASU professor, wove them on a 10-foot-wide loom from linen, wool, silk and cotton, with ASU fibers students working in her Tempe home. They took about a year. Her description: “composites of what you see when you drive.” Council meetings are public, so that’s your chance to see them.
The library
Imagination Gives Us Wings (Larry Kirkland, 1994). The best piece of art at the Civic Center that nobody notices. A swift-shaped oculus is cut into the roof over the library entrance, and as the sun moves, the bird’s shadow flies across the walls. Below hangs a 20-foot gilded feather, falling toward a granite inkwell on the lower level that is inscribed with a line the collection attributes to Emily Dickinson: “So many possibilities; let imagination give us wings.” Go on a sunny morning and watch the shadow move.
Pillars of Thought (Mags Harries, 1994). Five columns down the main reading room. A silhouetted face tops each column and projects patterns onto rounded screens in the clerestories, driven by sunlight through water- and wind-powered reflectors. The patterns stand for different styles of thinking and move too slowly to distract a reader. Harries also made Arizona Falls in Phoenix with Lajos Héder.
TODOS (Jarvis Rockwell, 2007). A wall drawing inside the library by Norman Rockwell’s son, made during a five-month Scottsdale residency. When it was made, Scottsdale Public Art described it as only the third publicly accessible Jarvis Rockwell drawing in the country.
Freedom (Robert Winslow, 1977). Alabama limestone, carved with only a hammer and chisel, now back at the northwest corner of the library. The Dunlap family gave it in honor of their three children, Robin, Lily and Holly.
SMoCA and the Center
Glass Scrim Wall (James Carpenter Design Associates with Will Bruder, 1999). The wall between SMoCA’s sculpture courtyard and the street: 56 laminated translucent glass panels, each about 4 by 7 feet, hung from a curving steel frame 21 feet high and 65 feet long, with dichroic glass blades between the bays that throw color onto the panels. It reads like a lantern at night.
The Museum Heart (Alberto Ríos, 1999). A poem by Alberto Ríos, written for the opening of SMoCA. It begins: “We, each of us, keep what we remember in our hearts. / We, all of us, keep what we remember in museums.” The collection lists it at SMoCA’s address, 7374 E. Second St.; read the whole thing there.
Drinkwater Boulevard and the south blocks
Breakaway (Barbara Grygutis, April 2024). The Drinkwater Boulevard underpass between Second Street and First Avenue, more than 300 feet long, lined with a cast-aluminum bas-relief rope on turquoise walls and lit at night. It’s named for breakaway roping, a rodeo event for women in which the rope breaks away from the saddle once the calf is caught. You can see it from a car in either direction.
Hummingbird Sanctuary (Kevin Berry, 1995), 3271 N. Drinkwater Blvd. Five 16-foot stylized trumpet-vine flowers in Cor-ten steel, rebar, river rock and stained aggregate. Each spring live trumpet vines cover them, and the hummingbirds follow. Spring is the time to see it.
Scottsdale Justice Center Façade and Gavel Benches (Jack Mackie, 1995), 3700 N. 75th St. Two big gavels mark the entrance. Six half-gavel benches carry quotations about justice.
The Spirit of Volunteerism (Gerry Metz, 2003), listed at 3704 N. 75th St. Jim Hill, “The Commissioner,” with one hand on a young ballplayer’s shoulder. For more than 20 years Hill ran about 150 volunteers a season selling Giants spring training souvenirs for youth charities. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Scottsdale commissioned it. The stadium itself has its own art, Craig Smith and Dan Collins’s Homeplates (1997), a 50-foot bronze strip from the pitcher’s mound to home plate and nine baseball symbols in the arcade frieze, one for each inning. See our spring training guide.
Momentum (Jeff Zischke, 1998). Inside the three-story atrium of One Civic Center, 7447 E. Indian School Rd.: five suspended kite-like units of aluminum tubing and nylon and Dacron fabric, gaining a panel at each level as they drop. It’s an office lobby, so go on a weekday.
Where the missing ones went
If you remember the Civic Center from before 2021 and something seems to be missing, it may have moved. Scottsdale Public Art’s records account for these:
- Mountains and Rainbows (Jose Bermúdez). The Scottsdale Fine Arts Commission bought it in 1975 for the new Civic Center park, and it was Bermúdez’s first major Arizona commission. A 22-foot ascending triangular sculpture, it originally stood in a pool where water sprays made rainbows, beside a fountain of 24 floating steel discs. Water damage took its toll and vandals stole the discs. In the 1990s it was restored without the water and moved to the northwest corner. In 2022 it went to DC Ranch Park, at 91st Street and Trailside View, east of the retention pond with the McDowells behind it. (The collection dates it 1976, a year after the purchase.)
- Allurement of a Journey (Kenji Umeda, 1980). A pink Portuguese marble memorial to Lew Davis, the Jerome-born painter many called the “Dean of Arizona Artists,” commissioned by his friends. Moved in 2021 to the grounds of the Arabian Library.
- Right Angle Variations (Gary Slater, 1975). Overlapping right angles in burnished stainless steel. Now at Bell94 Sports Complex, 9390 E. Bell Rd.
- LV III (Bill Barrett, 1977). Welded, brushed aluminum, the winner from 300 entries in the 1979 Anita J. Welch memorial competition, named for the Phoenix Magazine co-founder, with a $10,000 prize. It stood on the Civic Center Mall, then on the south side of the Center for the Performing Arts, and now stands outside Appaloosa Library, 7377 E. Silverstone Dr. Barrett agreed it’s a more prominent site.
- Quarter Ring Progression (Michael Anderson, 1977). Overlapping Cor-Ten steel arcs. Moved in 2007, well before the renovation, to the Granite Reef Senior Center, 1700 N. Granite Reef Rd.
- Diamond Bloom (Curtis Pittman, 2014). Not a Civic Center piece, but close. The brass and dichroic-glass arch at the entrance to Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West went into storage for the museum’s expansion, which was scheduled to start in late January 2024 and run two to three years. The plan is to reinstall it near the museum afterward; as of this writing we haven’t confirmed that it’s back.
Bonus stop at Granite Reef. While you’re at the senior center for Quarter Ring Progression, look for Scottsdale Across Generations (2006). David Joyce conceived it and died in 2003 before he could finish it. His widow, Kacey Joyce, and his daughter and son-in-law, Anna and Victor Maldonado, completed it. In August 2004 they set up custom photo booths around the theme “wisdom across generations,” and residents brought their parents, children and grandparents. More than 15,000 of those self-portraits became digital photo mosaics fired onto porcelain enamel.
How to do it
Park in a free Old Town garage, start at Brown and Main for the west entrance, loop City Hall, go through the library, cross to SMoCA, and finish by walking or driving the Drinkwater underpass. Allow two hours, or three with the library. On a weekday the library, the One Civic Center lobby and, during meetings, the Kiva are all open. Weekends are better for the outdoor pieces and worse for the indoor ones. Go in the morning for Kirkland’s shadow bird and in spring for the hummingbirds.