William Wegman, detail from Souvenir Playing Cards,2001, 55 photolithographs with portfolio box, ed. 100, 9 1/4 x 6 1/4 inches. Courtesy of Segura Publishing Company. Photo credit: unknown. © William Wegman.

Harold E. Edgerton, Swirls and Eddies: Tennis, 1939, gelatin-silver print, 24 x 30 inches. Collection of the MIT Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts. © Estate of Harold Edgerton.

Even in today’s high-tech digital world, the photographs taken by Harold E. Edgerton over 70 years ago remain truly amazing. Edgerton invented the strobe light—a rapid flash that enabled high-speed, stop-action photography and led to the development of the electronic flashes used in common cameras. Known to all as “Doc,” Edgerton was a passionate and endlessly curious inventor, scientist and teacher who was fascinated by the study of motion. For him, photography was a way of knowing more about the world. His photographs are among the most recognized and memorable of our time, shown early on at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Regardless, Edgerton declared, “Don’t make me out an artist. I’m an engineer. I’m after the facts. Only the facts.”

Organized by the MIT Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts and Smith Kramer Fine Art Services.

Sponsored by the SMoCA Salon.

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Anthony Caro, Tumble, 1985, steel, 17 3/8 x 15 ½ x 6 ½ inches. Collection of Karla and Walter Goldschmidt. Photo credit: J. Whitley Smith. © Barford Sculptures Ltd.

Walter Goldschmidt was a connoisseur of the highest order. With his wife Karla, he built an exquisite collection of modernist sculpture, with an astute eye for elegant, abstract form. Sculpture, as a medium, usually conjures thoughts of towering monuments or life-size pieces. In contrast, the Goldschmidts collected sculptures of intimate, domestic scale that live comfortably in their homes in Illinois and Arizona. This exhibition focuses on abstracted figures and geometric constructions by notable artists such as Jean Arp, Larry Bell, Lynn Chadwick, Mark de Suvero, Barbara Hepworth and Jacques Lipchitz, among others.

Organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

Sponsored by Eric Jungermann and Family; Phyllis and Richard Stern; and the SMoCA Salon.

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Christine Rebet, detail, Dice Spirit Society, preliminary drawing for The Black Cabinet, 2007, two-screen animation with sound and mixed media, running time ca. 3:04 minutes. Co-produced by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and Galerie Kamel Mennour, Paris. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Kamel Mennour, Paris. © Christine Rebet.

Animation has a magic that is never obsolete. Although today’s audiences are accustomed to the elaborate, wham-bam special effects of Hollywood extravaganzas, the hand-crafted look and childlike wonder of animation (an early way of creating “moving” pictures) continue to claim our delight. In Wonderland presents video animations by three artists with wide-ranging international perspectives: Christine Rebet (a French artist who studied in Venice and London and now lives in New York), Hiraka Sawa (a Japanese artist who studied and now lives in London) and Shahzia Sikander (a Pakistani artist who undertook graduate studies in the U.S. and now lives in New York). Rebet studied painting, stage design and choreography; Sawa, sculpture; and Sikander, traditional miniature painting.

These works by Rebet, Sawa and Sikander embody the vicious charm of fairy tales and the side-winding nature of fables. Animals become people who become landscapes; a sink becomes a lake; a rug becomes desert sand dunes; innocent characters are swooped into surreal dreams. In the artists’ fleeting realities, imagination is a powerful, poetic force.

Organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

Sponsored by SRP, Hub Clothing Store and the SMoCA Salon.

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Beverly McIver, Life is Sweet, 1998, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches. Purchased with the New Directions Fund. Photo credit: unknown. © Beverly McIver.

This installation features figurative works from the Museum’s collection by international, national and local artists who plumb the human soul. Included are recent acquisitions by Patricia Clark and Yves Klein, as well as works by Dominique Blain, Lesley Dill, Beverly McIver, Casey McKee, Mel Roman, Kara Walker and others

Organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

Sponsored by the SMoCA Salon.

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Dale Chihuly, Buttercup Yellow Persian with Red Lip Wrap, 1996, glass, 13 1/2 x 10 x 9 inches. Collection of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Gift of the artist. 1996.017. Photo credit: unknown. © Dale Chihuly.

Even the simplest, most straightforward sculptural forms often harbor rich associations, upon due reflection. On view in this installation are evocative abstractions by Dale Chihuly, Kim Crider, Charles Fine, Thomas Skomski, Howard Ben Tré and Howard Werner, as well as a monumental drawing by sculptor Robert Stackhouse.

Organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

Sponsored by the SMoCA Salon.

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Claudia Bernardi with students from the Walls of Hope School of Art and Open Studio, Perquin, El Salvador.

In a SMoCA-sponsored artist’s residency at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, children in long-term care participated in printmaking workshops with artist Claudia Bernardi, whose work is included in the exhibition Right to Print: Segura Publishing Company. From kindergarteners to high-school seniors, the kids honed their art-making skills and explored new avenues of self-expression. In 2004, Bernardi founded an art school in Perquin, El Salvador, to help heal a community physically and emotionally impacted by war.

Organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art

young@art gallery is generously sponsored by the Scottsdale Charros.

Additional funding provided by Wells Fargo.

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Margarita Cabrera, Hummer, 2006, vinyl and thread with car parts, 84 x 180 x 72 inches. Collection of The West Collection, Oaks, Pennsylvania. Courtesy of Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York. © Margarita Cabrera.

Car Culture explores our mixed relationship to cars—machines at the heart of American culture. The automobile epitomizes the American notion of personal freedom and adventure on the open road. It simultaneously signifies one’s status in society. The exhibition interweaves several themes: the magic of cars, the road trip, cars as dangerous objects and the personalization or “craft” of cars. Included are more than twenty works using photography, modified cars, video and performances.

Organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

Sponsored by the Scottsdale League for the Arts and Eric Jungermann and Family.

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Lyle Ashton Harris, Billie #25, 2002, monochromatic dye-diffusion transfer print (Polaroid), 24 x 20 inches. Courtesy of the artist and CRG Gallery, New York. © Lyle Ashton Harris.

Lyle Ashton Harris imbues his photographs with the complexities of human life—triumphs, horrors, heroics and prejudices. Since gaining significant acclaim in the early 1990s for his bold self-portraits (in which he explored race and gender), Harris has continually expanded his artistic practice. This exhibition takes a non-chronological approach and highlights the thematic strains that run throughout Harris’s work. It features and mixes new projects, the past with the present. The exhibition contains some mature content; teacher’s preview is suggested.

Organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

Sponsored by Mikki and Stanley Weithorn; Janis Leonard; and Linda and Sherman Saperstein.

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Melinda Bergman (with Sue Chenoweth and Carrie Marrill), DeNatured, 2006, installation view. Photo credit: Melinda Bergman.

Artist Melinda (Mel) Bergman creates a disarmingly simple dream-world populated with fairy-tale figures and whimsical things for her first one-person museum exhibition. She is creating a new sculptural installation with paintings and an animated video, a first for the artist. She will use car parts as characters. Bergman (who lives in Phoenix) is taking her interest in the crossroads of nature and culture to a new limit.

Organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

Sponsored by the SMoCA Salon.

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This exhibition features the results of a unique collaboration between high school students in Accra, Ghana, and in the greater metropolitan Phoenix area in conjunction with SMoCA’s exhibition, Lyle Ashton Harris. Students in Ghana worked with Harris and interns from New York University; local high-school students worked with artist James Hajieck and interns from Arizona State University, Tempe, to create these photographs. A webcam meeting of all the participants provided an opportunity for interaction and brought a unified focus to the exhibition.

Organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art

young@art gallery is generously sponsored by the Scottsdale Charros.

Additional funding provided by Wells Fargo.

opening reception in the young@art gallery

This exhibition features work created by teens from Central, Coronado, Horizon, McClintock and Desert Mountain High Schools who participated in Visions, SMoCA’s select, year-long art program. Influenced by in-depth discussions and hands-on workshops with local, national and international artists, the students produced these sophisticated paintings, photographs and sculptures.

Organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art

young@art gallery is generously sponsored by the Scottsdale Charros.

Additional funding provided by Wells Fargo.

Visions is sponsored by John F. Long Foundation and Nationwide Insurance Foundation and is also made possible by Paradise Valley School District, Phoenix Union High School District, Scottsdale Unified School District and Tempe Union High School District.

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