Landscape, Land Art and the American West:

A Joint Research and Scholarly Engagement Initiative of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts and the J. Willard Marriott Library

A large spiral rock formation known as Spiral Jetty is in a dry lake bed with a group of people on the left in the distance.

In 2018 the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded $500,000 to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts and the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah in support of a four-year collaborative project entitled Landscape, Land Art and the American West. This initiative is revolutionizing how the two institutions work together, capitalizing on both the Museum’s and Library’s substantial collections with the goal of transforming the U into a global resource hub for scholars studying the West.

Over the four-year period of the grant, the Mellon Foundation’s award will be matched by a $200,000 grant from the Office of the Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs, and additional support from across campus, including from the colleges of Fine Arts, Health, Humanities, and Mines and Earth Sciences. With this award, the UMFA and the Marriott appointed two joint faculty members, Jessica Breiman, Art and Archives Metadata Librarian, and Alana Wolf-Johnson, Collections Research Curator, to embed new collaborative practices between the Museum and the Library that will support faculty and student research.

The grant provides the UMFA and the Marriott with a unique opportunity to learn from one another while sharing their resources and ideas to foster interdisciplinary, collections-based scholarship across campus. The initiative invites students, faculty, artists, and scholars from not only the University of Utah campus, but from around the world, to critically engage with the UMFA’s and Marriott’s collections, furthering creative and scholarly research in the arts and sciences.

The grant supports three key goals:

  • MUSEUM+LIBRARY DISCOVERY PORTAL
    Create an online platform that enables simultaneous discovery and use of both the UMFA’s and Marriott’s collections.
  • COLLECTIONS RESEARCH
    Support focused, object-based research in the areas of landscape, Land Art and the American West that will increase the scholarly value of the UMFA’s and Marriott’s collections for artists and researchers across disciplines.
  • COLLECTIONS ENGAGEMENT
    Advance and disseminate innovative scholarship centered on the UMFA’s and Marriott’s collections by engaging with faculty, students, and the broader Utah community through public programming, exhibitions, curriculum planning, and the initiation of an annual Collections Engagement Grant (formerly the Fellowship in Collections Engagement Award.) Learn about the Collections Engagement Grant projects from 2019/2020 and 2021.

Supporting Original Scholarship: Collections Engagement Grants Awardees

The J. Willard Marriott Library and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts maintain significant holdings of immense value to researchers. In 2019, funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation helped the Marriott and UMFA initiate a series of three annual grants for “Landscape, Land Art and the American West,” to support University of Utah scholars interested in conducting original research using primary source material from the Marriott’s and UMFA’s holdings. The Library and Museum continue to facilitate original research and strive to identify and increase access to objects that will enhance student learning and foster innovative research and scholarship for University faculty. The following projects were selected to expand collections-based teaching, learning, and research across campus.

Learn about scholarly projects sponsored by the Marriott and UMFA with the Collections Engagement Grant: 

A black and white portrait of a white man with a beard and glasses

Michael Abrahamson, Visiting Assistant Professor, College of Architecture + Planning

Labor in and on the Landscape: Architectures of Organizing in the Western United States

Dr. Abrahamson will conduct research in the UMFA and Marriott collections to lay the foundation for a chapter in a book project that examines the architectural history of organized labor movements in the United States. During the fall semester, Abrahamson will supplement his archival research with a series of field studies at key sites in Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, and Montana to expand his findings on the union halls and labor lyceums that were constructed across the Intermountain region during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

A headshot of a blonde woman wearing sunglasses and a pink shirt at the salt flats in Utah.

Sarah Hollenberg, Associate Professor of Art History, College of Fine Arts

America’s Aliens: Isamu Noguchi and Patrick Nagatani’s Desert Encounters

With graduate research assistant Kelly O’Neill, Department of Geography, and undergraduate research assistant Alfredo Contreras, Film and Media Studies, Dr. Hollenberg will research the U collections and conduct site visits in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico to consider the desert landscapes that appear in art by Isamu Noguchi and Patrick Nagatani. The project examines how subjects like the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, nuclear warfare and testing, and the explosion of popular extraterrestrial narratives, as well as “alien” others during the mid-twentieth century, intersect in the artists’ work.

A headshot of a woman with long, dark hair.
Jaclyn Wright, Assistant Professor of Photography and Digital Imaging, College of Fine Arts

Impact | Land | Form

Professor Wright will produce a body of photographic work focused on the west desert landscape, including Stansbury Island and the Skull Valley region. Her project is informed by present-day and historical land use issues and early landscape photography’s role in furthering the project of American manifest destiny. Wright will use a large-format view camera and create in-camera collages based on maps, texts, and objects from the UMFA and Marriott collections, fusing archival documentation with present-day site visits to the locations depicted in primary source materials.

A woman with long, brown hair stands at a piano with a laptop, writing notes on paper.

Elisabet Curbelo González, Assistant Professor of Electroacoustic Composition & Music Theory and Head of Composition at the University’s School of Music

The Creation of New Music to Sonify Landscape, Land art, and the American West

This project expands on Dr. Curbelo González’s earlier collaboration with the UMFA in which her students composed music inspired by artwork in the Museum’s permanent collection. In this iteration, doctoral students will conduct in-depth research incorporating the Marriott’s primary source materials to lend context to new compositions. The project will culminate in a series of recordings highlighting not only the finished musical pieces but documenting the artistic process of incorporating the collections into the compositions.

A smiling white woman with short, brown hair wearing a short sleeve t shirt.

Crystal Rudds, Assistant Professor, Department of English 

Afrofuturistic Visions of the West

This award supports a course collaboration focused on Afrofuturism co-taught by Dr. Rudds and co-investigator Dr. Elisabet Curbelo González. Multimedia artist Alisha B. Wormsley will visit campus for a brief residency to compose an Afrofuturist film set in Salt Lake County, incorporating material from the UMFA and Marriott collections. Interested in the narrative and sounds of migration, modernity, and social movements, Rudds and Curbelo González’s project asks how Black Utahns imagined the future for themselves in the 19th and 20th centuries and how they might continue to inject fanciful and strategic ideas into Utah’s culture, policy, and technological landscape to ensure a space for diversity beyond 2021.

A headshot of a smiling black woman with short, curly, black hair.

Al Denyer, Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing, Department of Art and Art History 

A Sense of Place: Responses to Belonging in the American West

MFA Seminar for Painting and Drawing, Community Art, Photography, and Ceramics graduate students will conduct research using material from UMFA and Marriott Library to explore what “A Sense of Place” means in historical and individual contexts, culminating in a campus exhibition of the work produced during the semester. 

A white man with glasses and a beard.

Steven Chodoriwsky, Visiting Assistant Professor in Multi-Disciplinary Design, College of Architecture and Planning 

The Once Upon a Time State of the School of the State

The Once Upon a Time State of the School of the State: Constructions and Entanglements of Landscapes, Bodies, and the Arts on the University of Utah Campus, circa 1970

Along with two student research fellows, this project will conduct a performance-centered approach to archival materials using collage, publication, and workshop methodologies that explores the University of Utah during the volatile period of the 1970s.

A woman with dark, curly hair, glasses and large hoop earrings.

Ana Carolina Antunes, Lecturer, Gender Studies and Youth Leadership & Engagement Coordinator, Utah Neighborhood Partners

Utah Immigration Stories: Connecting Past to Present through Art and Photography

The project seeks to engage refugee and immigrant youth in discovering the rich contributions and histories of immigrants in Utah by exploring the UMFA and Marriott collections and developing photoshoots featuring community members to relate their own stories, cementing an ongoing partnership between the School of Social and Cultural Transformation and Youth Voices at the University of Utah Neighborhood Center’s Harland Community Center.

A smiling woman with light colored hair stands in a room full of plants and flowers.

Lisa Swanstrom, Associate Professor of English

Inventory of Affects: William Bartram’s Travels and Mark Dion’s “Travels… Reconsidered

Highlighting parallels between William Bartram’s 18th-century natural history book and 21st-century conceptual artist Mark Dion’s work, Swanstrom will work with a graduate student assistant to develop a web platform exploring emotional responses that appear in early American writing on the natural environment; the platform will permit users to conduct similar literary searches. 

Two separate headshots of different men. The man on the left has a buzzed head and wears a black buttoned shirt. The man on the right has short, black hear, wears a red buttoned shirt under a black suit jacket.

JAKE FITISEMANU, ASSOCIATE INSTRUCTOR, ETHNIC STUDIES, AND ADRIAN VILIAMI BELL, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

Illuminating Shared Experiences

Building a Method for a Comparative Iconography of Pacific Islanders and Native Americans in Utah: Illuminating Shared Experiences

Comparative cross-examination of symbology and visual motifs in material culture that builds on the unique histories of Pacific Islander and Native American communities in Utah from the late 19th century onwards, culminating in an online platform where representative communities can engage with the collections.

Six headshots of different people arranged in a grid. The top row is an old man with a beard, a smiling black man, and a woman with short, dark hair and glasses. The bottom row is a smiling woman with blonde hair, a smiling man with short brown hair and sunglasses, and a white man with short brown hair.

Andy Hoffmann, University of Utah Honors College

Sounds, Sedimentations, and Sanctuaries: An Assemblage Approach

Hoffmann’s student-directed project will use multi-disciplinary methodologies inspired by critical thinkers in the arts, humanities, and social sciences to probe the American West. The group will produce a limited-edition book and film based on their findings.

Three headshots in a row. The first is a man with dark hair, a beard, and glasses. The second is a white man with short brown hair and a suit jacket. The last is a woman's profile outside.

Joshua Graham, Adjunct Professor, Department of Art & Art History

Unearthing the Future: Experiential Art Education in the Great Basin

Graham will work with Patrick Durka, MFA, Art Department Chair at Stansbury High School, Reilly Jensen, MA History, MFA Community-Based Art Education candidate, Art in the Community T.A., University of Utah ART 3550 and Stansbury High School students to develop a site-specific art curriculum for Stansbury High students, using UMFA and Marriott collections as primary source material for creating artwork and instruction on the cultural ecology of the Great Basin.