Pictures of Belonging is an unprecedented (re)introduction featuring more than 100 artworks by these trailblazers, with many on public display for the first time. By tracing their prewar, wartime, and postwar artistic production, Pictures of Belonging illuminates an expanded view of the “American experience” by women who used artmaking to “take up space,” to make their presence and existence visible, and to assert that they belonged.
In spring 2024, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts hosted a special presentation of Sonic Blossom, a participatory artwork by Taiwanese-American artist Lee Mingwei. Sonic Blossom is a performance-based project that allows local, classically trained singers to offer a spontaneous gift of song to museum visitors in the UMFA galleries.
The history of photography in the United States is deeply tied to the American West. From 19th-century survey expeditions to 21st-century environmental activism, western landscapes have been featured as some of the most prominent subjects in American photographic history.
Comprised of over 150 powerful photographs and narratives, Tatau displays the work of Samoan tattoo masters (tufuga tā tatau), focusing on the influential Sulu‘ape family. Explore a beautiful and sacred art that is fundamental in the preservation and spread of Samoan culture.
Ideas about the American West, both in popular culture and in commonly accepted historical narratives, are often based on a past that never was, and fail to take into account important events that actually occurred. The exhibition “Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea,” examines the perspectives of 48 modern and contemporary artists who offer a broader and more inclusive view of this region.
Imagine your family’s journey to get here. Imagine the map of the lands and seas they traveled, the borders they passed through, the lands they’ve cared for. Now imagine that journey is on a quilt. What would that quilt look like?
Featuring one hundred works by nearly eighty artists from the 1920s to the present, Black Refractions: Highlights from The Studio Museum in Harlem surveys nearly a century of creative achievements by artists of African descent.
The Race to Promontory: The Transcontinental Railroad and the American West is a major traveling exhibition celebrating the 150th anniversary of the “Meeting of the Rails” at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869, with original photographs, historic artifacts, and one of the famous ceremonial spikes.
Site Lines: Recent Work by University of Utah Art Faculty, guest curated by Felicia Baca, features more than forty works in a wide variety of mediums from twenty-seven local creators and teachers. This highly anticipated show celebrates local artists and recognizes the talented creators who teach art on the U campus.
Chiura Obata was one of the most significant Japanese American artists of the twentieth century. Chiura Obata: An American Modern, a major retrospective of his work, features more than 150 watercolors, paintings, prints, and screens. Many of these works have never been on public display.
Go West! Art of the American Frontier from the Buffalo Bill Center of the West examines the development and disruption of the American West through more than eighty original artworks by Euro-American and Plains Indian artists.