Scottsdale is home to more than 125 professional art galleries and studios, one of the highest per-capita anywhere in the nation. The city has quickly become a center for art in the United States. According to the Scottsdale Convention & Visitor's Bureau and American Style Magazine, the city has become one of the country's largest art markets, usually only sharing ranks with New York City, New York and Santa Fe, New Mexico in terms of commerce generated as a direct result of art sales and purchasing.
Its galleries and studios are most famous for their western and Native American themed art, though a growing devotion to the contemporary arts has taken hold over the past couple of decades - an element most visible by the large number of modern art galleries which have opened along the Marshall Way Arts District, and the opening of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in 1999. Both are located in Downtown Scottsdale.
Located in the touristy Old Town district of Downtown Scottsdale, the Scottsdale Civic Center Mall is home to the intimate two-theater Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, the Scottsdale Historical Museum, as well as the more recently established Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, also referred to simply as "SMoCA". It is the only permanent museum dedicated solely to the contemporary arts in the state of Arizona.
Taliesin West, famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home and school from 1937 until 1959, is now one of the most popular tourist attractions in Arizona. The complex is located in the northeast fringe of the city, at the base of the McDowell Mountains.