Arleene Correa Valencia is an emerging contemporary artist interested in migration, family, and the visibility/invisibility of undocumented people in the United States. Born in Michoacán, Mexico, Correa Valencia fled with her family to the United States at age three and grew up in Napa Valley. The prolonged experience of separation when her father left to find work made a profound impact on Correa Valencia’s childhood and outlook. Her artistic practice continues to explore the grief, anxieties, and fears of repeated separation alongside the joys of reunited life together.
Last fall, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts invited community members to submit proposals for a site-specific, participatory installation in ACME Lab. After a rigorous review process, the UMFA selected teaching artist Sydney Porter Williams to create our newest ACME Lab: Interwoven: Social Transformation Through Art and Community. Collaboratively envisioned with students from Sydney’s University of Utah course, Art for Critical Consciousness — this exhibition deepens our understanding of shared humanity by highlighting our intersecting identities and diverse experiences.
Blue Grass, Green Skies: American Impressionism and Realism from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an exhibition that highlights seventeen paintings by some of the most esteemed Realists and Impressionists. The roster includes Americans active in Europe like Mary Cassatt in France, East Coast denizens like Childe Hassam and John Henry Twachtman, and Californians like William Wendt and Granville Redmond.
Photo-Secession: Painterly Masterworks of Turn-of-the-Century Photography celebrates an intrepid group of photographers, led by preeminent photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who fought to establish photography as fine art, coequal with painting and sculpture at the turn of the 20th century.