What to know about Scottsdale, Arizona
Scottsdale has more than 100 art galleries and its leading employment provider is tourism. Scottsdale also hosts the Waste Management Phoenix Open and is the spring training home of the San Francisco Giants.
The Republic
- The inaugural Scottsdale Ferrari Art Week will be held March 20-23 at WestWorld and will feature approximately 100 galleries.
- Organizers hope to attract both seasoned art collectors and novice enthusiasts with a range of exhibits, lectures, and events.
- The fair will showcase a diverse selection of art, including paintings, sculptures, and unique home furnishings, with prices ranging from affordable to high-end.
Trey Brennen started preparing for an inaugural fine art fair to be held in Scottsdale when he ran into the unexpected problem of having to educate gallery owners from other states and countries about what Arizona and metro Phoenix have become.
As a gallery owner, Brennen knew it would be no small task trying to convince others to pack up a sampling of their paintings, sculptures or other artwork and ship them here, with all of the logistical arrangements and costs involved. What he didn’t realize was how little many of the owners knew about the area.
“I assumed the secret was out” about the Valley’s population growth, economic maturity and growing affluence, but that wasn’t always the case in discussions with gallery owners across the globe, he said. “A lot of them thought we were just a bunch of cowboys, Indians and cactus.”
But the efforts eventually paid off, with roughly 100 galleries committing to display their artwork in booths at the Scottsdale Ferrari Art Week set for March 20 to 23.
The Scottsdale fair will be held in the 117,000-square-foot north hall at WestWorld. Single-day admission tickets starting at $30 are now on sale ($15 for kids and students), with entry to other events available at additional cost. Ticket information and other details can be seen at scottsdaleartweek.com.
The event’s organizers contend that, despite the distinctive art of the Southwest and the growing affluence of many Valley residents, the area hasn’t previously hosted an event of this size that would appeal to a national art-collecting audience.
“It’s a chance for people to see some of the most interesting and diverse art in their lives,” said Jason Rose, co-founder and one of the main owners of the Scottsdale event. “It’s the largest and best collection of galleries ever to come to Arizona.”
Lots to see, do and learn at Scottsdale art fair
Rose said he expects anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 pieces of art to be for sale and viewing, spanning from antiquity to contemporary. There also will be parties, lectures, music, runway shows and “a lot of energy,” he vowed.
Michael Plummer, a New York resident, industry veteran and former chief operating officer at Christie’s Financial Services, helped to put the program together as the fair’s development director.
He described metro Phoenix as one of the nation’s “underappreciated communities of collectors,” making this an ideal setting for such an event. But the fair also will make presentations geared to novice art enthusiasts, with Plummer scheduled to give a lecture on how to buy art for the first time.
Fairs, he added, are “good opportunities to learn about artists and different types of art.” New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Ann Arbor, Michigan, are some of the other U.S. cities that host large fine-art fairs.
All of the pieces on display in Scottsdale, primarily paintings and sculptures, will be available for purchase, Rose said. The fair also will feature unusual or unique home furnishings and other design elements for sale.
Connecting to museums and sponsors
The fair will also coordinate with some off-site events at the Phoenix Art Museum, the Heard Museum, the Desert Botanical Garden, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West.
Event organizers are hoping to attract tourists in town for Cactus League spring training games and place it among other local seasonal events that include upscale auto auctions and the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament.
Scottsdale Ferrari headlines the fair’s sponsors, which also include Gila River Resorts & Casinos, Neiman Marcus, Sanderson Lincoln, Heritage Auctions, Turon Travel, Galerie Town, Breakthru Beverage, Veuve Clicquot and Stella Artois.
Scottsdale architect Mark Candelaria sees the fair’s emergence as a sign that metro Phoenix is maturing as an international hub, with art collecting gaining more prominence as wealth levels rise. “I design a lot of high-end homes, and a good portion of my clients are serious art collectors,” he said.
Candelaria, an investor in the fair, said he will emcee a preview show geared to “big fish, heavy-hitter” collectors prior to the event’s official opening.
As one indication of the state’s affluence, just under 750,000 Arizona residents reported adjusted gross incomes of $100,000 or more, representing about 22% of all households, according to Internal Revenue Service data for 2022, the most recent year available. Around 42,000 Arizona households reported incomes of $500,000 and up.
A range of exhibits, attractions
Toney Abeyta will curate or organize a special exhibition, “Desert Modernism,” which will show the convergence and progression of Phoenix artists of Native, Anglo and Latino descent, from approximately 1930 to 1980. He’s a Diné artist, dealer, curator and appraiser for PBS’ Antiques Roadshow.
Other lectures and programs will be offered by representatives of the Arizona State University Art Museum, the Center for Creative Photography, the Phoenix Art Museum and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.
The event has signed on galleries from as far away as Israel, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Japan. Those with Arizona locations include Axiom Contemporary, Bentley Gallery, Larsen Gallery, Lisa Sette Gallery, Medicine Man Gallery, Nelson Fine Art and Xanadu Gallery.
“Some galleries are spending a small fortune just to come into our market,” said Brennen, who owns his own gallery, T.H. Brennen Fine Art in Scottsdale. He plans to bring 12 to 15 paintings valued at around $10,000 to $300,000 each to the upcoming event.
“There are a lot of costs and logistics involved in getting high-priced artwork to a fair,” he said.
Assessing fine art as an investment
The investment potential of art is difficult to gauge, as each piece is unique. Updated, publicly available information on prices and transactions is lacking.
By one measure, the Sotheby’s Mei Moses indices, artwork appreciated at a respectable 8.5% annual rate from 1950 to 2021. That’s better than the 5.2% average annual return on bonds since 1926 but less than the 10.4% annual return on stocks, according to Wilshire Associates.
But fine art typically is difficult to sale readily and must be insured. It’s also subject to potentially hefty transaction costs when a collector is buying or selling. Nor does it generate any income.
Conversely, art prices don’t move in a similar pattern to, say, the stock market, providing diversification benefits to an investment portfolio, Plummer said. Plus, there’s the enjoyment aspect, as “Art is a real asset that you can appreciate on your wall,” Candelaria said.
Reach the writer at russ.wiles@arizonarepublic.com.