What it’s actually like
Main Street’s galleries divide roughly into the rooms that sell the West and the rooms that sell now, and Xanadu is the friendliest of the second kind. It occupies a suite in the Main Street Plaza, the building that went up in the Arts District in the mid-2000s, and the work inside is contemporary: painting, sculpture and mixed media by living artists the gallery has chosen to develop rather than simply hang. Nothing about it is hushed. The people on the floor want to talk about the work, and about how the art business works, which is rarer on this street than it should be.
That openness has a source. Jason Horejs started at Legacy Gallery, a few doors east, in 1991 at the age of seventeen, learning the trade from one of the families that built the Main Street Arts District. He and Carrie Horejs opened Xanadu on September 10, 2001, at the Shops at Gainey Village. The next morning the world changed, and the couple spent a day wondering what would become of a gallery opened the day before 9/11. On September 12 a car pulled up and their first collector walked in. The gallery has run on that kind of nerve ever since.
In 2006 Xanadu moved down to the newly built Main Street Plaza, and it has been part of the Thursday ArtWalk rhythm for two decades now. Jason also publishes RedDotBlog and teaches artists how to get into galleries, which is why working painters know the name as well as collectors do. Across the street, Altamira Fine Art is the contemporary-Western counterpart; together they make this block the modern end of Main Street.
What to buy
A painting from an artist on the way up. Xanadu’s roster is developed, not rented, and the gallery’s whole philosophy is that a collector should be able to buy a serious contemporary piece without a serious fortune. Ask what has arrived this month.
Sculpture and mixed media. The three-dimensional work is where the room departs furthest from the Main Street norm, and it is worth a slow lap.
A conversation. Tell them what you love and what you can spend. This is the gallery on the street built to answer that honestly.
Parking, timing and the practical stuff
The gallery is on the south side of Main Street west of Scottsdale Road, in the heart of the district. Street parking on Main is scarce and short-term; use the free public garage at the Civic Center off Drinkwater Boulevard and walk west, or park on the Fifth Avenue side near the canal and come south. The Old Town on foot note covers the loop, and the Old Town guide covers everything around it.
Thursday evenings are the ArtWalk, when the street closes to serious thinking and opens to wine and crowds. Come then for the atmosphere; come on a weekday afternoon in the cool season if you actually intend to buy, when the founders have time to walk you through a body of work. In summer the galleries keep daytime hours and the street is empty by early afternoon, which is not a bad time to have a room to yourself.
Eat while you’re there
Malee’s Thai Bistro is a block east on Main and has been the district’s gallery-hopper lunch for decades. Craft 64 on the west end of the street does wood-fired pizza and Arizona beer for the casual end of the evening. For the full Old Town experience, the Sugar Bowl, pink since 1958, is a short walk to Scottsdale Road, and FnB in Craftsman Court is the dinner that justifies the trip.
How it got here
Xanadu’s story is a Main Street story that took a detour through a resort-area shopping center. Jason Horejs grew up in the Arts District trade, hired at seventeen in 1991 by Legacy Gallery, whose owners were themselves second-generation dealers descended from the first gallery on Main Street. By the time he and Carrie decided to open their own room, the 1990s boom had filled Main Street with established galleries, and the couple chose the Shops at Gainey Village, the upscale center on Scottsdale Road north of downtown, for their debut.
The date they picked was September 10, 2001. The 2000s opened for Scottsdale, as for everywhere, with the morning after, and a new gallery selling contemporary art to resort visitors on September 11 had every reason to expect the worst. The Horejses spent the day wondering whether they had opened a business into a void. On September 12 a car pulled into the lot at Gainey and their first collector walked in and bought. It is the founding story the gallery tells about itself, and it explains the temperament: a room that does not panic, that trusts people will keep wanting to live with art.
By 2006 the Main Street Plaza had been built in the Arts District, one of the few new buildings on a street of mid-century storefronts, and Xanadu moved into it, bringing Jason back to the block where he had learned the business. The move also placed the gallery in the ArtWalk, the weekly event that had defined the district since the 1970s, and gave it a Thursday audience it never had at a shopping center.
What sets Xanadu apart in the 2010s and since is that its founder decided to teach. RedDotBlog, Jason’s writing about how galleries choose, price and sell art, became one of the most read resources for working artists in the country, and his workshops on getting into galleries turned a Scottsdale dealer into a national voice for the artist’s side of the counter. The gallery’s artist studios program is the same idea made physical. On a street where the mechanics of the trade are usually kept behind the back-room door, Xanadu opened it, and has done well by doing so.