Scottsdale’s walking tour covers the art you can reach on foot from Old Town. This guide covers everything else, and it’s most of the collection. Since the 1980s the city has put commissioned art into infrastructure: bus shelters, roundabouts, bridges, fire stations, libraries and the medians of new roads. You can’t see it in an afternoon stroll, but you can see most of it from a car in a day.
Facts here come from Scottsdale Public Art’s collection records. Three rules before you start:
- The driver doesn’t look. Several of these works stand in the middle of roundabouts and medians. Never stop in a roundabout or on a shoulder. Park legally nearby and walk back on the sidewalk, or let the passenger look.
- Some are indoors. Library and airport pieces are open during public hours. Fire stations and police buildings are working facilities. Look from the public sidewalk and don’t walk in unless you have business there.
- Go early or late. In the hours after sunrise and before sunset, steel, glass and bronze look their best, and the north Scottsdale stops have mountains behind them.
Water-themed pieces along the canals, the Greenbelt and the Water Campus have their own guide, public art on the water. The art at the Civic Center is in our Civic Center field guide. The biggest artwork in the city, the lizards and prickly pears on the Loop 101 walls, has its own page: The Path Most Traveled.
South Scottsdale
Garden of Evidence (Dennis Oppenheim, 2009), 7601 E. McKellips Rd. The most important artist in this guide, at the least likely address: the entry plaza of the police department’s District 1 station and crime laboratory. Oppenheim (1938–2011), who made his name in 1960s earth art, body art and conceptual work and later turned to permanent public sculpture, placed six architectural-scale prickly pear forms inside “shadow” shapes laid out on the ground, with interlocking cactus-and-bench forms and ceramic tiles based on the evidence the lab analyzes. It’s a working police building. Look from the public approach, and if you want to photograph the plaza up close, ask at the front desk first.
Yaqui Mural (Mario Martinez, 1999), listed at 7700 E. Roosevelt St., the address of Vista del Camino Park. Martinez, a Pascua Yaqui painter from New Penjamo in Scottsdale, made it with the help of thousands of Yaquis and their friends. It honors the Yaqui people’s history here: their origins on the Río Yaqui in Sonora, Yaqui workers in the Valley’s economy, and Scottsdale’s three Yaqui villages, including old Penjamo off McDowell Road, home from the early 1950s until 1972. This is the community’s own history, told on the community’s terms. Look respectfully; this is a neighborhood, not an attraction.
Historical Happenstance Markers (Tad Savinar, 2013). Six small pedestrian-scale markers along south Scottsdale Road with etched steel discs of residents’ memories. Park and walk; our Historical Happenstance page has all six locations.
Sunburst (RE:site, Shane Allbritton and Norman Lee, 2020), 1365 SkySong Blvd., at Scottsdale and McDowell roads, on the old Los Arcos Mall site. Three stainless steel rings set with dichroic glass, joined like the rings of a spherical astrolabe and suspended from three steel supports. The glass changes color with the sun, and the small plaza underneath catches the colored light. It’s up-lit at night. Go at both times of day. (SkySong’s big white shade canopy is a landmark of its own. Who designed it is a question for another page.)
Lizard Acres (Joe Tyler), along the McDonald Drive streetscape around Agua Linda Park. Oversized steel-and-rebar tortoises eating prickly pear and a horned toad sunning on a boulder, built over two years with the engineering firm BRW. Tyler named it for what was once the largest cattle feedlot in Arizona, a childhood haunt of his. Scottsdale Public Art’s online record for this one has clearly been mixed up with another entry: it lists City Hall’s address and the dates 1960 and 1969. Treat the date as unknown.
The Indian School and Camelback corridors
Travel Quotes Bus Shelters (Michael Maglich, 1999), Indian School Road between Hayden Road and 68th Street. Travel quotations on the shelter pillars, among them Groucho Marx (“This is the fifth trip I’ve made today, and I haven’t been anywhere yet”), Disraeli (“Travel teaches toleration”) and the last words of the bank robber Wilbur Underhill: “Tell the boys I’m coming home.” Read them from the bench, while you wait or with your car parked.
To Serve and Protect (Jeff Carol Davenport, 2001), 8401 E. Indian School Rd. A bronze police officer with a little girl holding a doll. Officer Ron Gorski came up with the idea and raised the money himself, and Arizona Bronze of Tempe donated the foundry work.
Flower Pauses (R&R Studios, Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt, 2010), listed at 7502 E. Indian School Rd. Six “open home” seating nodes along Indian School Road, each with a patterned floor and a garden bench, inspired by neighbors who visited each other’s houses. Walk it, don’t drive it.
West Couplet Bus Shelters (Kevin Berry, 1995). Two shelters on Goldwater Boulevard, one at Indian School Road and one just south of Camelback Road. Cor-Ten steel, river rock and concrete under a copper roof, with a cast-bronze sunburst on the back and tree guards patterned on mesquite leaves. They won an Orchid Award and a Valley Forward Award of Merit.
Wavelength (Kevin Berry, 2005). Four shelters near Camelback and Scottsdale roads, with wave-shaped Cor-Ten shade backs.
Michael’s Dream (Jasper D’Ambrosi, 1984; donated 1996), 8055 E. Camelback Rd. An over-life-size figure modeled on the sculptor’s son Michael. The title refers to Michael’s hope of a cure for his daughter’s cystic fibrosis. D’Ambrosi’s widow Ruth donated it after his death in 1986.
Fire Station 603: Rug Runner and Wallpaper Tapestry (Christine Lee, December 2020), 8191 E. Indian Bend Rd. A terrazzo “runner” from the entrance into the corridor, set inside with real spanners and rings sliced from decommissioned firefighting hose couplings and outside with the same shapes in aluminum. Inside is a dichroic “wallpaper” of fire department shields and Camelback silhouettes. The exterior part of the runner is the only piece you’d see without going inside.
Shea Boulevard and the Mustang Library
Sonoran Monsoon and Desert Moods (Joe Tyler, 1997). Six bus shelters on Shea Boulevard between 92nd and 136th streets. Two Sonoran Monsoon shelters are steel trees bent in the wind with a round bench: east of 92nd Street on the south side, and west of Via Linda on the north side. Four Desert Moods shelters are saguaros holding up a white cloud-shaped roof, decorated with saguaro flowers, suns or quarter moons: east of 124th Street (south side), west of 130th Street (north), west of 136th Street (north) and east of 136th Street (south). It’s the best drive-by art in the city. Take Shea east in the morning and watch the right side, then come back.
Mustang Library, 10101 N. 90th St. Three works:
- Mustang Wall (Ken Williams, 1989), a carved clay-brick bas-relief of galloping mustangs against desert mesas, by a muralist from Pueblo, Colorado. Scottsdale Public Art calls the library the site of the first piece of art commissioned through the city’s Public Art Program. When the building budget ran short, the Cultural Council paid for the mural from public-art funds.
- Birdie Umwelt (Mary Lucking, May 2017), at the Mustang Transit Center: 20 bronze and stainless steel house finches reading books, a birdhouse that mimics the library’s postmodern architecture, and birds and feathers sandblasted into the pavement.
- Horse (Maxine Kim Stussy), laminated plywood, given by the artist to the Scottsdale Fine Arts Commission in 1975. The collection dates it 1976.
The Airpark
The Scottsdale Airpark has the densest cluster of road art in the city, most of it about flight.
One with the Eagle (Pat Mathiesen, completed 1989), 7200 E. Thunderbird Rd., at Scottsdale Road and Thunderbird. The Scottsdale Western Art Association gave it to the city, and it stood in the median at the Airpark entrance, Scottsdale and Butherus roads, for twenty years. In 2008 roadwork narrowed that median, and Scottsdale Public Art, residents and the artist picked the new site, as close to the original as they could get on Scottsdale Road.
Icarus Falling (Alan “Dale” Wright, about 1964), 7950 E. Redfield Rd., on the northwest corner of Redfield and Hayden roads, the Airpark’s east entrance. The concrete base is textured to look like wind lifting him. The story goes that Wright got the idea at a New Year’s Eve party at the Blue Goat in Scottsdale, ran home and welded the maquette still in his expensive suit, burning holes in it. Erwin “Flip” Weber gave it to the city.
Aspire (Simon Donovan and Ben Olmstead, April 2014), 15599 N. Hayden Rd., in Scottsdale’s first arterial multi-lane roundabout. A figure that reads as one man lifting into flight in stop-motion, or three men on each other’s shoulders with the top one soaring. It’s built from thousands of stainless steel washers welded over sculpted foam forms that were then cut away, and it’s LED-lit after dark. Circle the roundabout once as a passenger, then park nearby and look from the sidewalk.
TRI-HEX-CIRC (Phillip K. Smith III, 2024), 14587 N. Hayden Rd., the Raintree Drive and Hayden Road roundabout. Painted steel more than 50 feet tall that changes from a circle at the base to a hexagon in the middle to a triangle at the top. Drive past at different times of day; the point is how the desert light moves across it.
Hopi Deity (C. Doug Wiegel, 1989), 14960 N. 78th Way. A sculpture derived from a petroglyph image of a dancing figure. The artist gave it to the city. (The collection spells his name both Wiegel and Weigel.)
From Land and From Air and Sun and Moon (Martin Donlin, winter 2018), in the Aviation Business Center, 15000 N. Airport Dr. Thirty digitally printed and sandblasted glass panels on two levels, plus a single antique stained-glass window made at Glasmalerei Peters in Paderborn, Germany. They carry maps of Hohokam canals, animal tracks, the McDowell Mountains and poems by Ofelia Zepeda (Tohono O’odham), Natalie Diaz and Richard Shelton. It’s the best thing to see inside the airport. Go during business hours.
Fire Station 612: Wholeness (Maria Salenger/Jones Studio, 2025), northeast corner of Hayden Road and Mayo Boulevard. Laser-cut steel patio panels of mesquite, grasses and creosote. At the right hour, the shadow and the steel together form a complete Maltese cross.
WestWorld
WestWorld, 16601 N. Pima Rd., has two horses at its gates.
- Horseworld (Snell Johnson, 1989), given by Howard E. Keim: bronze Arabian, Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse, one showing, one racing, one cutting. Johnson also made the MGM Grand lion in Las Vegas.
- Impulsion (Jeff Zischke, December 2014), at the renovated equidome and North Hall: a horse of stainless steel square tubing, about 20 to 24 feet tall and 35 to 40 feet wide, lit from LEDs set in the pavers. Nearly 200 artists applied for the commission. See it at night.
North Scottsdale
Bell94 Sports Complex, 9390 E. Bell Rd. Mary Shindell’s Mesquite Bosque (September 2022), eight 8-foot violet aluminum panels of mesquite and marine blue butterflies, and Gary Slater’s Right Angle Variations (1975), burnished stainless steel moved from the Civic Center. See our Bell94 page.
Horizon Park, 15444 N. 100th St. Joan Baron’s Spirit Columns (1999), painted and tiled walls and columns made with 20 Scottsdale teenagers. Horizon Park.
McDowell Mountain Ranch Aquatic Center, 15525 N. Thompson Peak Pkwy. Norie Sato’s Cactus Mirage (2007), a 30-by-40-foot acrylic scrim on the slide tower with mylar discs behind it that flutter in the breeze. You can see it through the lobby windows. See McDowell Mountain Ranch Park.
Arabian Library, 10215 E. McDowell Mountain Ranch Rd. Norie Sato’s Desert Tracery (2007), steel and glass with prickly-pear skeletons and Braille, Greek and genetic code, and Kenji Umeda’s marble Allurement of a Journey, moved from the Civic Center in 2021. See the Arabian Library page.
Reata Sports Complex, 9809 E. McDowell Mountain Ranch Rd. Troy Neiman’s Polygon Plaza (2023), built on the soccer ball’s 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons. See Reata.
Thompson Peak Dog Park, 20199 N. 78th Pl. Shachi Kale’s Woof! (2026), powder-coated aluminum panels of dogs big, small, fluffy and goofy. The newest work in the collection. See Thompson Peak Park.
DC Ranch Park, 91st Street and Trailside View. Jose Bermúdez’s 22-foot Mountains and Rainbows, moved from the Civic Center in 2022, east of the pond with the McDowells behind it. See DC Ranch Park.
Appaloosa Library, 7377 E. Silverstone Dr. The library opened in November 2009 on ground that had been Rawhide. Inside: Anna Skibska’s Golden Alchemy (2009), 90 glass orbs, all amber except one green and one blue, in the reading room, and Mayme Kratz’s Shedding Light (2007), resin embedded with material from an old landfill. In the patio courtyard: Roger Phillips’s Untitled, 1983, a 126-inch stainless steel piece with red aluminum discs that spin in the wind. Outside: Bill Barrett’s aluminum LV III, moved from the Civic Center.
re currents (Merge Conceptual Design, February 2014), 22900 N. Scottsdale Rd. Five rolled and twisted painted steel ribbons arch over the walkway on the Scottsdale Road bridge across Rawhide Wash. The bridge put an end to the flood closures that used to cut the road. Park and walk the bridge.
Alluvium (Brad Goldberg, 2011), 8840 E. Pinnacle Peak Rd., just east of Pima Road. Drainage culverts, a pedestrian underpass, rusticated railings and a landscape feature built from Pinnacle Peak’s own materials, part of the Pima Road improvements between Deer Valley Road and Pinnacle Peak Road.
Fire Station 613: A Path in the Sun (Amelia Poe and Daniel Martin Diaz, summer 2018), 26380 N. Hayden Rd. A 270-square-foot terrazzo Fibonacci spiral with native stone, recycled glass and mother-of-pearl in the lobby and entry corridor. It’s indoors at a working station, so treat it as a reason to know it exists, not a stop.
George “Doc” Cavalliere Park, 27775 N. Alma School Pkwy. Jeff Zischke’s Sonoran Seed Pods (September 2014), sculptures of mesquite, creosote, brittlebush and yucca seed pods along a ¾-mile loop trail, paid for by a bequest from resident Frank Crerie. Next door at 27777 N. Alma School Pkwy is Dale Wright’s welded steel Mountain Climber (1971), given by Flip Weber in 2003. See Doc Cavalliere Park.
Ashler Hills Park, 32220 N. 74th Way. Mary Bates Neubauer’s Potentilla (2024), five laser-cut steel shade panels patterned on the Arizona cinquefoil’s five-part flower, left to rust. See Ashler Hills Park.
How to do it in a day
Start south at sunrise: Garden of Evidence, Sunburst, and the Indian School shelters before the traffic builds. Take Shea east for the Tyler shelters, then cut north through the Airpark roundabouts late in the morning. Have lunch near the Airpark, with Donlin’s glass at the Aviation Business Center. Afternoon is for the libraries and sports parks. Finish at re currents or Doc Cavalliere Park as the light goes gold on the mountains. It’s a lot of driving and a long day.