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. 

Gateway to Himalayan Art introduces the main concepts and meanings of Himalayan Buddhist devotional art, a practice developed and evolved in Tibet, India, Nepal, and Bhutan, as well as interrelated Mongolian and Chinese traditions.

The Ultimate Fine Art Road Trip

What better way to support the arts than a cross-country museum crawl starting and ending right here at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts! Did you know that certain UMFA memberships grant you free admission to over 1,400 other museums and cultural institutions?

Stone on Boundary features 5,000 copper foils molded from river rocks in Osaka, Japan and Salt Lake City, Utah. The installation reflects Utah’s vast and varied landscape – from river stones in deep canyons to the towering peaks of the Wasatch and Oquirrh Mountains and the dynamic red rock formations in southern parts of the state.

Mining the West, a collaboration between J. Willard Marriott Library Special Collections and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, brings together art, archival documents, and other primary source material from the nineteenth century through today to illustrate the technological, economic, social, and environmental implications mining has had, and continues to have, on the American West and its people. 

In this digital exhibition journey to the time that Spiral Jetty took shape while, on the other end of Great Salt Lake, the University of Utah’s landscape underwent its own kind of transformation.