Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art

Our popular Mystery in the Museum returns on May 29 with an encore presentation of “Brushstrokes and Buried Secrets.” If you missed the April event, here’s your second chance to crack the case. Assemble your team and get your tickets today! Link in bio. #SMoCA #ScottsdaleArts #Scottsdale #OldTownScottsdale #EscapeRoom

Why just enjoy art when you can collect it⁉️ From butterflies to beets… if you haven’t heard, we have our brand new @inciardimachines at the Shop@SMoCA ! Just purchase tokens for $1 at our front desk and test your luck to own one of the select 10 available prints✨🦋🫜 – #SMoCA #Scottsdale #InciardiPrints #MiniPrints #CollectArt

For this one-night-only performance on June 6, Squidsoup’s "Infinite" will become a three-dimensional instrument, played live in response to performers in the space: @NicoleOlsonDance and violinist julz from @LunarCalendarOnline , who recorded the soundscape for "Infinite." Details at the link in our bio. #SMoCA #ScottsdaleArts #ArtMuseum #Scottsdale #OldTownScottsdale

Every angle offers a unique perspective👁️✨ Featuring works from SMoCA’s collection, “Mark + Making” considers how artists use line, texture, and gesture to define form and space. – Installation view of Mark + Making | Selections from the SMoCA Collection, 2026. Photo by Gabby Usinger #SMoCA #ScottsdaleArts #ContemporaryArt #VisualArts #MuseumCollection

Julianne Swartz creates artworks that synthesize sound, light, energy, and matter into experiences that are at once intimate and expansive. Working across sculpture and site-specific installation, she invites tactile, auditory, and affective engagement, often incorporating ephemeral or immaterial elements to make subtle energies and emotional frequencies register in the body. Her practice is less concerned with representation than with the expansion of perception, attuning viewers to the unseen forces that shape experience and suggesting alternate modes of embodiment and empathy. In “Tender Alchemy,” Julianne presents new and recent works that function as finely tuned, multisensory instruments. Using materials such as clay, copper, paper, and transduced sound, she composes objects that balance opposites—soft and hard, delicate and grounded, still yet vibrating from within. Many emit frequencies calibrated to influence the nervous system, drawing on the artist’s research in vibrational healing and neural entrainment. Sounds hover at the edge of perception, encouraging viewers to slow down and notice how their presence completes the work. Described by the artist as “soft instruments,” the sculptures create environments for embodied attention. Through this quiet choreography of sensation, Julianne opens space for reflection, restoration, and the possibility of transformation. “Tender Alchemy: Beth Ames Swartz and Julianne Swartz” on view at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) from March 21, 2026, through August 23, 2026. Photography by Gabby Usinger de Sarthe @julianneswartz @bethamesswartz @_smoca @gab_u

“Tender Alchemy” is the first exhibition to unite the work of mother and daughter artists Beth Ames Swartz (b. 1936) and Julianne Swartz (b. 1967). The two artists have cultivated distinct practices, connected by a shared devotion to transformation, healing, and the invisible forces shaping human experience. Though their materials and methods differ, both engage in a kind of alchemy: a transmutation of matter, energy, and sentiment into forms of quiet power and profound presence. The exhibition unfolds across three galleries. The first surveys six decades of Beth Ames Swartz’s abstract interpretations of universal spiritual themes, revealing her lifelong pursuit of art as a catalyst for inner awakening and collective healing. The second presents new and recent sculptures by Julianne Swartz made as multisensory instruments to attune viewers to the energies that animate the body and environment. The third gallery presents their first collaboration in an installation of Beth’s newest series, “Quantum Light,” expanded through an immersive soundscape composed by Julianne. Together, their work forms a cross-generational dialogue grounded in tenderness, perception, and transformation and offers complementary visions of how art can serve as a bridge between many worlds. Organized by Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and curated by Lauren R. O’Connell, curator of contemporary art. Support provided by World Class Sponsor Sarah and JT Marino, Signature Partner Ann B. Ritt Charitable Foundation, Signature Sponsors Jill M. Brown, Richard Corton, Nancy and Michael Gifford, Diane and Gary Tooker, and an anonymous donor, and Supporting Sponsors Jane and Mal Jozoff, Sally and Richard Lehmann, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, and an anonymous donor. On view at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) from March 21, 2026, through August 23,2026. @bethamesswartz @julianneswartz @_smoca

“Tender Alchemy: Beth Ames Swartz” is a mini-survey of the artist’s practice beginning in 1964, five years after she moved to Arizona. From that moment on, her work became increasingly experimental and guided by the belief that art can facilitate personal growth and healing. Working in focused cycles of research, ritual, and creation, Beth devotes several years to each new line of inquiry, developing processes that give visual form to spiritual transformation. Over six decades, she has completed more than fifty-five distinct series, each rooted in a rigorous investigation of wisdom traditions across cultures and eras. The first half of the exhibition follows Beth’s early breakthroughs, sparked by a pivotal 1970 trip down the Colorado River that helped clarify her artistic vision. She began exploring the energies of earth, air, water, prana (life force), and fire while transforming personal trauma into creative force. These investigations culminated in her iconic fire work, defined through a ritualized process of burning and intuitive mark-making that unites the physical and the spiritual. The second half of the exhibition highlights the period in which Beth’s full artistic vision took shape—when spiritual inquiry became the core driver of her work, allowing each new philosophical focus to expand and evolve her life and practice. Beginning with “A Moving Point of Balance” in 1985, the paintings on view come from a selection of thirteen major series and are grouped into interconnected themes. While each series emerges from a distinct study, they share a visual cohesiveness grounded in radiant color, symbolic geometry, and an embodied sense of energy connecting Beth to a lineage of 20th-century spiritualist painters. “Tender Alchemy: Beth Ames Swartz and Julianne Swartz” is on view at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) from March 21, 2026, through August 23,2026. @bethamesswartz @julianneswartz @_smoca

🕐Got just a minute? 🕛Or an hour? See Evan Roth: Pathfinding before it’s too late!  Evan Roth’s Pathfinding reflects a search for slowness, light, and warmth, using the sky above Scottsdale as both source and inspiration. Evan Roth: Pathfinding is on view until May 17🌫️ – Installation view of Evan Roth: Pathfinding, 2025. Photo by David Blakeman. #ScottsdaleArts #SMoCA #DigitalArt #ArtAndTechnology #MediaArt

We now have @inciardimachines Mini Prints available at the Shop@SMoCA . Just purchase tokens at our front desk, then see which of the 10 available prints you receive! Only $1 per print. #Inciardi #InciardiPrints #SMoCA #Scottsdale #Arizona

“TENDER ALCHEMY (published by @hirmer.publishers ) demonstrates the intergenerational dialogue between the artistic practices of Beth Ames Swartz (@bethamesswartz ) and Julianne Swartz. As mother and daughter, the artists maintain distinct aesthetics while sharing an affinity for investigating the ethereal and spiritual potential of art. The essays written by Susan L. Aberth (@aberthsusan ), Nancy Princenthal, and Lauren O’Connell (@lauren.r.oconnell ) and illustrations featured underscore arts interconnection with alchemy, spiritualism, physics, animism, and psychology, and contextualize the contemporary artists within the lineage of art movements such as transcendentalism, phenomenology, and participatory art.” Tender Alchemy is on view at @_smoca through August 23, 2026. You can get your copy of the catalogue at the museum or online: /us/Tender-Alchemy-Beth-Ames-Swartz-and-Julianne-Swartz/202605010537

We're still two weeks away from the next Glow Up sound bath in the dreamlike atmosphere of Squidsoup's "Infinite" installation, but the event is nearly sold out. Get your tickets today at the link in our bio. #SMoCA #ScottsdaleArts #SoundBath #Scottsdale #Phoenix

Today is International Sculpture Day! Celebrate with us by exploring our current exhibitions: Tender Alchemy, featuring sculptural works by Julianne Swartz, and our collection show Mark + Making, which highlights sculptures from our collection. Wander through the museum and explore the dynamic sculptures currently on view. – Installation image of Tender Alchemy: Beth Ames Swartz and Julianne Swartz. #ScottsdaleArts #SMoCA #Sculpture #ContemporaryArt #MuseumCollection