5 Blocks
September 21, 2012 - April 21, 2013
5 Blocks is an exhibition of youth artwork created in collaboration with UMFA educators by students at Hawthorne Elementary (Salt Lake City School District) and Granger High School (Granite School District). By investigating a five block area near their school, students demystified how we shape the spaces we live in and how those spaces shape us. Through a variety of media, this exhibition shares with viewers what students discovered when they left the classroom and got a chance to engage with the city. During the planning of this exhibition UMFA educators consulted with Damon Rich, a nationally recognized designer and artist who currently serves as the Urban Designer for the City of Newark, New Jersey.
SPONSOR: C. Comstock Clayton Foundation
Dale Nichols: Transcending Regionalism
September 28, 2012 - March 18, 2013
Dale Nichols is well known as the fourth major Regionalist artist, alongside Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Stueart Curry. Their work, created in the Midwest during the Great Depression, defined a period in American art when artists turned toward the land and known narratives in hope of creating uniquely American themes and styles of art.
The UMFA is delighted to offer Dale Nichols: Transcending Regionalism, an exhibition spanning much of his long career. Nichols' early paintings focused on the often-difficult relationship between Midwest farmers and their land. His stylized landscapes and red barns, representing both shelter and sustenance, held images of hope for a struggling nation and honored the agrarian ideal. By the 1940s Nichols indulged his wanderlust, traveling repeatedly to Alaska and spending extended periods of time in Guatemala and Mexico. Paintings from this period are represented in this exhibition as well.
Dale Nichols: Transcending Regionalism is a traveling exhibition organized by the Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art and curated by Amanda Mobley.
SPONSORS:
S.J. and Jessie E. Quinney Foundation | UMFA Special Exhibitions Council | Ray, Quinney & Nebeker Foundation
salt 6: Emre Hüner
October 26, 2012 - February 10, 2013
Emre Hüner's (Turkish, born 1977, lives Berlin) multidisciplinary practice incorporates drawing, sculpture, video and built environments as well as found objects, artifacts, and samples. By juxtaposing these different objects and practices, he constructs a type of fragmented archive of the past and the future, of fact and fiction, of the manmade and the natural. His non-linear approach and widely varied references open a space for particular moments to be imagined. Questioning ideas of progress and the failure of modernity, his work invites viewers to draw their own connections and create their own narratives. While he touches on problematic political relationships and contentious issues, he does so by mixing independent references that combine to present mythical, yet recognizable, events. salt 6 is the debut of Hüner's 2-part film and installation Aeolian Processes.
Nancy Holt: Sightlines
October 19, 2012 - January 20, 2013
Nancy Holt: Sightlines will offer an in-depth look at the early projects of this important American artist whose pioneering work falls at the intersection of art, architecture, and time-based media. Since the late 1960s, Holt has created a far-reaching body of work, including Land Art, films, videos, site-specific installations, artist's books, concrete poetry, and major sculpture commissions. Nancy Holt: Sightlines showcases the artist's transformation of the perception of the landscape through the use of different observational modes in her early films, videos, and related works from 1966 to 1980. With her novel use of cylindrical forms, light, and techniques of reflection, Holt developed a unique aesthetics of perception, which enabled visitors to her sites like Sun Tunnels (1973-76), located in Utah's Great Basin, to engage with the landscape in new and challenging ways.
Nancy Holt: Sightlines is a traveling exhibition organized by the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University and curated by Alena J. Williams. Major support for the exhibition and its programs is provided by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Fine Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
CLICK HERE for events, directions to Sun Tunnels and more.
Horizon: Selections from the Guild of Book Workers
October 5 - December 30, 2012
Whether by contemplating the apparent horizon, personal horizons, or the horizon of the book as a binding or an object, this exhibition showcases the current work of the members of the Guild of Book Workers while offering a glimpse into what is just beyond. Guild of Book Workers members were invited to interpret "horizon" as broadly or as narrowly as they wish.
Day With(out) Art
December 1, 2012
On Saturday, December 1, 2012 the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) will participate in its annual observance of World AIDS Day by covering a selected work of art from the permanent collection. This year, the UMFA has chosen to conceal its Auguste Rodin bronze sculpture, Female Torso (V & A), located in the second floor European gallery. The entire sculpture will be covered with a black cloth during visiting hours in recognition of Day With(out) Art, a global event that coincides with World AIDS Day and aims to acknowledge the complex issues surrounding the lives of individuals living with HIV or AIDS. The "absence" of this extraordinary work will serve as a reminder to Museum visitors of the fallen victims to the disease who are now absent, as well as those who continue to suffer from the epidemic and crusade for a cure. The UMFA joins thousands of other institutions on this day, December 1, 2012, in using art to honor individual legacies, commemorate personal loss and to underline the necessity of increased awareness and action to combat the ongoing AIDS epidemic.
Speed: The Art of the Performance Automobile
June 2 - September 16, 2012
This special exhibition explores the art of the automobile, featuring antique and vintage racing cars that exemplify the beauty of vehicles designed for speed. Artistry and engineering come together in these functional yet highly crafted works of art.
Photo Finish
June 2 - September 2, 2012
Cars are a pervasive symbol in American art and pop culture. Symbolizing such dichotomous ideas as masculinity and femininity, speed and leisure, industry and nature, the individual and the collective, and the glamorous and the mundane, the automobile lends itself to many interpretations. Photographers have long been inspired by the automobile, attempting to capture and examine its multiple meanings through a lens. This group of photographs from the UMFA's collection showcases the diversity of ways artists have depicted and interpreted the omnipresent automobile.
salt 5: Daniel Everett
March 30 - July 29, 2012
salt 5: Daniel Everett is the fifth in the Museum's series of exhibitions featuring innovative art from around the world. Working in photography, video, and installation, artist Daniel Everett investigates the ways in which the human-made landscape shapes and structures our experience as individuals.
George Rouault: Circus of the Shooting Star / Cirque De L'Etoile Filante
February 3 - May 13, 2012
Artist Georges Roualt was fascinated by the circus, a world where superficial brightness was underscored by overwhelming sadness. The images in his portfolio of etchings, Cirque de l'Etoile Filante (Circus of the Shooting Star), demonstrate Rouault's attempt to strip away the "spangles" of the clown's costume and reveal the "reflection of paradise lost." On loan to the UMFA from the Syracuse University Art Galleries, this exhibition comprises color etchings that introduce the portfolio and wood engravings illustrating Rouault's text. Begun in 1926 and published in 1938, the portfolio was the product of Rouault's collaboration with Parisian publisher and art dealer Ambrose Vollard. Their partnership proved to be one of the most productive in the history of printmaking.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fun-filled family guide and in-gallery activity.
At Work: Prints from the Great Depression
February 10 - May 6, 2012
Organized in collaboration with Dr. Matthew Basso, Assistant Professor of History and Gender Studies and Director of the American West Center at the University of Utah, this exhibition features Depression-era prints focusing on men and women at work, selected from the remarkable collection of Marcia Price and Ambassador John Price. During the years of the government-sponsored Federal Art Project, American printmaking techniques were expanded, and themes of labor were integral to the new print vocabulary. Printmakers, along with other artists, were given an unprecedented sense of purpose when the U.S. government included them in the vast numbers of unemployed workers who could apply for work relief from the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
At Work speaks powerfully to contemporary questions—underscored by anxieties surrounding the great recession—about the place of labor in our lives.
The Faculty Show: Recent Work by The University of Utah Art Faculty
February 17 - May 6, 2012
The UMFA is pleased to present an exhibition of artwork by the acclaimed University of Utah Department of Art and Art History faculty. New works by faculty artists will be on view in the Museum's Great Hall and first-floor galleries. The exhibition reflects trends in contemporary art as well as traditional practices in a variety of media including: ceramics, painting and drawing, sculpture, photography and digital imaging, printmaking, installation, and new media.
Low Lives 4: Networked Performance Festival
Friday, April 27 | 6:30-9:30 pm and Saturday, April 28 | 1:00-4:00 pm
FREE with general admission
Experience the merging of performance and technology in Low Lives 4! The UMFA is pleased to be the central presenting venue for this international festival, which features live performance-based artwork streamed online and projected in real-time at venues around the world. Don't miss your chance to meet Low Lives curator Jorge Rojas and view more than fifty live performance pieces from nine countries, including on-site performances at the UMFA by featured artist Michelle Ellsworth. www.lowlives.net and www.michelleellsworth.com
salt 4: Xaviera Simmons
November 18, 2011 through February 26, 2012
salt 4: Xaviera Simmons is the fourth in the Museum's series of exhibitions featuring innovative art from around the world. New York-based Xaviera Simmons uses photography, as well as other mediums including installation and performance, to construct multivalent narratives of collective and personal histories. Simmons's work often references traditions of American landscape painting, exploring depictions of the individual in nature. In her large-format photographs, scenery becomes a central character, harboring the stories of immigrants and migrants. Archetypal figures, like sages and nomads, serve as conduits for open-ended narratives embedded in the land, allowing entrance into, in the artist's words, "other characters, narratives, and geographies." In addition to photography, the exhibition includes a sculptural installation made of hand-lettered, locally found wooden scraps—materials chosen for their ubiquitous use in vernacular signage—affixed directly to the gallery wall. This tangled matrix of text gleaned from notes, conversation, news articles, folklore, poetry, and literature, forms its own kind of lyrical landscape, imbued with historical and personal memory.
LeConte Stewart: Depression Era Art
July 21, 2011 through January 15, 2012
In an exciting collaboration, the UMFA has teamed up with the Church History Museum to stage the largest exhibition ever mounted of Utah artist LeConte Stewart's work. With a combined total of over 200 paintings and drawings selected from museums and private collections across the west, these joint exhibitions will feature masterworks that have rarely been seen. The shared effort focuses on the most creative and skilled period of Stewart's long career.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE ON THE ARTIST, BOTH EXHIBITIONS, PROGRAMMING, DIRECTIONS, AND VIRTUAL RESOURCE
Color
September 16, 2011 through January 8, 2012
Containing a diverse range of artworks from around the world, Color explores the relationship of color to artists and audiences. This exhibition utilizes over twenty pieces from the UMFA's permanent collection, using color as a connector across cultures and time. This exhibition includes works by artists Robert Motherwell, Alex Katz, Anna Campbell Bliss, and more. While visiting the exhibition, be sure to use the hands on, in-gallery color collage wall to create your own color compositions. This exhibition is funded as part of the UMFA's Art in a Box program and is presented in conjunction with the debut of the new statewide box, Art in a Box: Color.
Final Light: V. Douglas Snow in Retrospect
August 31, 2011 through January 8, 2012
The Utah Museum of Fine Arts and Salt Lake Art Center are pleased to present Final Light: V. Douglas Snow in Retrospect, a collaborative exhibition celebrating the work of eminent Utah landscape artist, V. Douglas Snow (1927-2009). Museum visitors and long-time admirers will have the opportunity to encounter Snow's large body of work at two local art venues.
Africa: Arts of a Continent
On view through September 4, 2011
This ambitious exhibition of African art objects drawn from the UMFA’s permanent collection centers on themes of the spirit world and afterlife. Africa: Arts of a Continent explores the spiritual and political power of Central African masks, the magic and mystery of ancestral African sculptures, and the enduring beauty of African objects used in everyday life. The installation debuts of one of the UMFA’s newest acquisitions: a late XXVIth Dynasty Egyptian sarcophagus.
salt 3: Cyprien Gaillard
May 26 - August 21, 2011
salt 3: Cyprien Gaillard is the third in the UMFA's new series of exhibitions that showcase the work of contemporary artists from around the world. The films and installations of French artist Cyprien Gaillard (b. 1980) examine contemporary landscapes and architectural ruins of the recent past, engaging with artistic traditions of Romanticism and Land Art. His work was featured in the 2011 Venice Biennale.
Don Olsen: Abstracts from Nature
December 2010 through August 14, 2011
The exhibition Don Olsen: Abstracts from Nature, on view in the G.W. Anderson Family Great Hall, celebrates the 100th birthday of abstract artist Don Olsen (1910-1983). Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Olsen's work was misunderstood because it represented a style unfamiliar to Utah audiences. Today, however, he is acknowledged as one of the most influential and gifted abstract artists to have worked in the region. A student of Hans Hoffmann, Olsen created abstract expressionist works using volume, color, and shapes taken from nature. Large-scale paintings spanning forty years will highlight the most prominent work in his oeuvre.
Helen Levitt Photographs
February 24 through July 17, 2011
One of the great photographers of the twentieth century, Helen Levitt took the activity of city streets as her primary subject, paying special attention to the children for whom the street served as a playground. This presentation of photographs drawn from the UMFA's collection includes representative works from the late 1930s and early 1940s-when Levitt emerged as a key member of the New York School photographers-as well as later photographs from her long and accomplished career.
The Smithson Effect
March 10 through July 3, 2011
The Smithson Effect is the most ambitious contemporary art exhibition ever organized by the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Through sculpture, video, photography, installation, and sound art, The Smithson Effect will introduce you to twenty-three of the world's leading contemporary artists, whose work is influenced by the legacy of artist Robert Smithson (1938-1973).
CLICK HERE for more information on The Smithson Effect.
Collecting Knowledge: Renaissance Cabinets of Curiosity
January 27 through May 15, 2011
Collecting Knowledge: Renaissance Cabinets of Curiosity explores items that were typically found in cabinets of curiosity in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe, including prints, books, scientific instruments, and objects obtained through travel. This exhibition examines the people who created cabinets of curiosity, their strategies for classifying and grouping items, and how they used this knowledge to make sense of their world.
During Fall Semester 2010, four graduate students in the University of Utah Department of Art and Art History gained first-hand knowledge of the work involved in creating an exhibition. The result of their hard work is the exhibition Collecting Knowledge: Renaissance Cabinets of Curiosity. The students were advised by Professor Sheila Muller and they worked closely with UMFA staff to complete all necessary steps for curating an exhibition— from developing exhibition themes to selecting the objects; from writing the object label text to planning the exhibition design; and from securing related public programs to creating an effective marketing plan.
Low Lives 3
April 29 • 6-10 pm and April 30 • 1-4 pm
Now entering its third year–and hosted by the UMFA for the first time–Low Lives is an exhibition of works transmitted via the internet and projected in real time at multiple venues around the world. This project was curated by University of Utah alum Jorge Rojas and featured a live performance by New York-based artist Kristin Lucas, organized by UMFA curator Jill Dawsey.
salt 2: Sophie Whettnall
November 18, 2010 through February 27, 2011
salt 2: Sophie Whettnall is the second in the UMFA's new series of exhibitions that showcase the work of contemporary artists from around the world. Belgian artist Sophie Whettnall (b. 1973) works mostly with photography, video, and multimedia installations, yet she was trained as a painter and much of her work retains a rich, painterly quality. Whettnall engages the temporal nature of video as a medium, creating images that inhabit a space between stillness and activity as they develop over time. Frequently training her camera on the landscape, she explores the relationship between the self and its surroundings in a world of increasing transience and dislocation.
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salt reflects the international impact of contemporary art today, forging local connections to the global, and bringing new and diverse artwork to the city that shares the program's name.
Trevor Southey: Reconciliation
October 21, 2010 through February 13, 2011
This retrospective of the life and work of Utah-based artist Trevor Southey gives prominence to four life passages that have defined Southey's character and his art: his youth in Rhodesia and education in England; his life as a married, practicing Mormon and his desire for a utopian lifestyle created around family, farming, and art; Southey's decision to acknowledge his homosexuality in 1982, which coincided with the first major public awareness of the AIDS epidemic; and the reconciliation of his life decisions as expressed in his revised artistic approach to the human form.
PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON TREVOR SOUTHEY: RECONCILIATION
Faces: Selections from the Permanent Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art
October 21, 2010 - February 13, 2011
Faces: Selections from the Permanent Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art brings together classic works of Pop Art from the UMFA's permanent collection, as well as more recent works influenced by Pop, with a focus on the human face and figure. Many works in the exhibition take the form of portraits, such as Alex Katz's series of screen prints depicting young people in the 1970s, or ironic self-portraiture, as in Robert Arneson's Untitled Trophy (Bust Of Bob) (1978). Faces also includes a series of Andy Warhol's Polaroid portraits, a recent gift from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, on view for the first time. Ranging from portraits of the rich and famous-among them, Pia Zadora, Yves Saint Laurent, and artist Keith Haring-to unknown figures, Warhol's Polaroids reveal the idiosyncrasies of his subjects.
Yayoi Kusama: Decades
October 21, 2010 - February 13, 2011
Yayoi Kusama: Decades offers a focused presentation of exemplary works by renowned Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. A key figure in the New York art world of the late 1950s and 1960s, Kusama's pioneering work has galvanized subsequent generations of artists. From her early watercolor paintings of the 1950s to her "accumulation" sculptures of the 1960s, to recent, large-scale "infinity nets" paintings, the exhibition highlights works from each decade of the artist's long career.
The Ideal Landscape
October 7, 2010 - February 6, 2011
This exhibition brings together thirteen Chinese landscape paintings dating from the Ming dynasty to the twentieth century. These artworks do not recreate a landscape, but instead conjure an ideal scene imagined by the painter. As a result, these depictions of mountains and bodies of water offer expressions of the artist's heart and mind.
Community: Eat, Work, Play
May 6, 2010 - January 9, 2011
Community: Eat, Work, Play is a collaborative exhibition between the UMFA and Lincoln Elementary school. With the help of UMFA educators, first and sixth grade students will create large-scale murals to be installed in the Museum's education gallery. Each group will take on one aspect of the theme, either eat, work or play, and explore visually how that idea is represented in their community.
Painting Utah's Mount Olympus
July 8 through November 14, 2010
Mount Olympus is not the tallest mountain in the Wasatch Range but anyone who has seen this awesome natural wonder will agree with the early pioneers who bestowed it with the Greek name for ‘the home of the gods.' Indeed, Mount Olympus stands today as an imposing, silent sentinel, a powerful symbol of nature's transcendent beauty for the residents of the modern metropolis that has grown at its foot. For the past century and a half, some of Utah's most talented artists [Lee Greene Richards, Gilbert Munger, Edwin Deaken, Anton Rasmussen, David Meikle and others] have attempted to do justice to Mount Olympus...not an easy task for mere mortals and yet through their work, the home of the gods is immortalized in Painting Utah's Mount Olympus.
Las Artes de Mexico from the Collection of the Gilcrease Museum
May 6 - September 26, 2010
Las Artes de México explores the richness of Mexican art and culture, from the ancient work of the Mayans and Aztecs through the twentieth century. The exhibition includes a broad array of artifacts such as woven fabrics, masks, and religious objects from Mesoamerica (pre-Conquest Mexico) as well as paintings by modernist masters like Rufino Tamayo, Jose Clemente Orozco, and Diego Rivera.
salt 1: Adriana Lara
May 6 - September 26, 2010
Concurrent with Las Artes de México, the UMFA announces the launch of an ongoing series of semiannual exhibitions entitled salt, which will showcase work by emerging artists from around the world. salt aims to reflect the international impact of contemporary art today, forging local connections to the global, and bringing new and diverse artwork to the city that shares the program's name. The inaugural salt exhibition features the work of Mexico City-based artist Adriana Lara (b. 1978), whose work explores the relationship between art-making and other more commonplace forms of production. Lara takes the exhibition format itself as an object of inquiry, arranging objects in unexpected, sometimes humorous configurations that foreground and dismantle the conventions of displaying and looking at art.
Lara is part of numerous collective art projects such as Pazmaker, a free distribution zine-like publication, Lasser Moderna, an experimental music band, and "Perros Negros," an art production office that proposes new platforms for discussion and artmaking. She has had solo exhibitions at Artpace, San Antonio, Texas (2009); Gaga Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City (2008); Galería Comercial, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2007); and Air de Paris, Paris, France (2007). Her work has been included in many group exhibitions, including San Juan Poly/Graphic Triennial, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2009); Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, Germany (2009); The Generational: Younger than Jesus, New Museum, New York (2009); and LA MAMAIN ET LA PUTAIN, Air de Paris, Paris, France (2006).
Pablo O'Higgins: Works on Paper
February 18 – September 19, 2010
Experience a selection of lithographs by the late Pablo O'Higgins, an artist dedicated to creating heroic depictions of the working class in revolutionary Mexico. Although he is virtually unknown in his home state of Utah, O'Higgins is remembered and celebrated in Mexico as a true artist "of the people."
The Continuing Allure: Painters of Utah's Red Rock
January 13 - June 27, 2010
To love the western landscape is to embrace the subtlety of a vast and mysterious desert terrain. Among the artists who conquered the obstacles of painting Utah's red rock country were Maynard Dixon, Edgar Payne, and Conrad Buff, just a few of the notable painters represented in this exhibition.
Influences of the Silk Road
November 5, 2009 - April 25, 2010
What do jade, chess, the camera obscura and Hinduism have in common? They were all exchanged on the Silk Road, of course! The Silk Road was a series of routes that crossed through Europe, the Middle East, and Asia from the first millennium B.C.E. through the second millennium C.E. In this alluring exhibition, visitors of all ages can explore objects from the Museum’s permanent collection that either traveled on the Silk Road or reflect the religions, technologies, and goods that were exchanged en route. Families and students will enjoy a treasure hunt through the exhibition and other galleries, get educational insight through an easy-to-use audio tour, and even satisfy their senses at a spice sniff station.
Splendid Heritage: Perspectives on American Indian Art
February 10, 2009 - March 1, 2010
The UMFA is proud to premiere an extraordinary exhibition of cultural and artistic treasures from the John and Marva Warnock Collection. Splendid Heritage presents 149 objects of unique artistry and cultural expression from the Native people of the Northeast and Plains.
For extended information about the exhibition and related programming please click here.
Desert Secrets: Photography from the UMFA's Permanent Collection
On view through January 31, 2010
Desert Secrets presents provocative images of Southwestern deserts, exploring the histories hidden in these vast, seemingly barren and uninhabited spaces. Using both traditional photographic techniques as well as newer forms of digital imaging and surveillance technology, the featured photographers engage themes of technological intrusions into the land; nuclear testing; clandestine military operations; conspiracy theories; and the mysterious appearance of the desert landscape itself.
Desert Secrets will be complemented by Patrick Nagatani's Nuclear Enchantment, a virtual exhibition highlighting Nagatani's work.
Then & Now: Selections from the Permanent Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art
Through September 20, 2009
This exhibition of modern and contemporary art from the UMFA’s permanent collection brings together key works from the last five decades. The 1960s and 70s saw sweeping changes in society and politics, as well as in the realm of art, with many artists responding to pressing political concerns. Then & Now highlights parallels between art and societal events both of the past and of our own moment, featuring a special video presentation by acclaimed British artist Phil Collins, entitled baghdad screentests (2002).
Karl Bodmer: Beyond the Frontier
February 27 - June 21, 2009
Explore the lives of native people and wild landscapes of the American West in this exhibition of large-scale prints by artist and adventurer Karl Bodmer. The exhibition features an original copy of Travels in the Interior of North America, a journal published in 1839 that documents the New World expedition of explorer Alexander Philipp Maximilian through Bodmer's artwork. View impressive aquatint engravings of Bodmer's drawings and sketches, and discover the new nation of America as seen by European explorers.
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