The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) is the region's primary resource for
culture
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...
and visual arts. It is located in the Marcia and John Price Museum Building in
Salt Lake City, Utah
Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the Capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...
on the
University of Utah
The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...
campus near
Rice-Eccles Stadium. Works of art are displayed on a rotating basis. It is a university and state
art museum
An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum's own collection. It might be in public or private ownership and may be accessible to all or have restrictions in place. Although primarily con ...
.
Overview
Many free public programs are continuing through the closure period, including the museum's popular Third Saturday for families, educational outreach, and ARTLandish: Land Art, Landscape, and the Environment. The UMFA's Dumke Auditorium, museum store, and museum cafe have reopened to the public.
UMFA is accredited by the
American Alliance of Museums
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, p ...
. It has a cafe and store located inside the building along with more than 20 galleries. The museums permanent art collections include over 17,000 works of art. The different cultures represented include African, Oceanic and the New World, Asian, European, American, and the Ancient and Classical World.
History
The creation of a formal art gallery on the top floor of the University of Utah's Park Building in the early 1900s marks the beginning of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. In the beginning, paintings by local artists filled this three-room gallery. Through the next six decades, the art department at the University of Utah received major art gifts and specific requests from donors to remodel the gallery into a museum. After the renovation of the gallery was finished, the University’s president,
A. Ray Olpin, established it as the Utah Museum of Fine Arts on May 6, 1951.
In 1967, Frank Sanquineti was appointed as the first professional director. By this time, the museum had entered a new period of growth which resulted in the building of a new museum.
After the museum’s relocation in 1970, its goal was to expand its collections, and the Annual Friends of the Art Museum Acquisition Fund was formed. Over the years this annual fund has helped support the expansion of the museum’s collections and its ability to offer art education programs. Due to donations from patrons, local and national foundations, the University community, and the citizens of the State of Utah, the UMFA’s collection now encompasses 5,200 years of artistic creativity. Since the mid-1900s, when the collection was around 800 objects, it has grown to over 13,000 art objects. This huge expansion required the building of yet another museum, and construction of a new building was started in 1997. The UMFA opened in the Marcia and John Price Museum Building on June 2, 2001, and David Dee was appointed Executive Director the following year.
Since the second relocation, the UMFA has experienced unprecedented growth in all areas of operation. In February 2005, the
Utah State Legislature
The Utah State Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Utah. It is a bicameral body, comprising the Utah House of Representatives, with 75 state representatives, and the Utah Senate, with 29 state senators. There are no term li ...
declared the UMFA as an official state institution, confirming the importance of the museum’s role as a center for art, culture, and education in the state of Utah. In April 2009, David Dee resigned from the museum and Gretchen Dietrich was named Executive Director effective August 2010.
Collections
Works of the European tradition from the 14th to the 19th centuries include such artists as
Filippo Lippi,
Pieter Brueghel the Younger
Pieter Brueghel (also Bruegel or Breughel) the Younger (, ; ; between 23 May and 10 October 1564 – between March and May 1638) was a Flemish painter, known for numerous copies after his father Pieter Bruegel the Elder's work as well as h ...
,
Jan Brueghel the Younger
Jan Brueghel (also Bruegel or Breughel) the Younger (, ; ; 13 September 1601 – 1 September 1678) was a Flemish Baroque painter. He was the son of Jan Brueghel the Elder, and grandson of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, both prominent painters who ...
,
Anthony van Dyck,
Giovanni Paolo Panini
Giovanni Paolo Panini or Pannini (17 June 1691 – 21 October 1765) was an Italian painter and architect who worked in Rome and is primarily known as one of the ''vedutisti'' ("view painters"). As a painter, Panini is best known for his vistas of ...
,
Hyacinthe Rigaud
Jacint Rigau-Ros i Serra (; 18 July 1659 – 29 December 1743), known in French as Hyacinthe Rigaud (), was a Catalan-French baroque painter most famous for his portraits of Louis XIV and other members of the French nobility.
Biography
Rigaud ...
,
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Jean-Honoré Fragonard (; 5 April 1732
(birth/baptism certificate)
– 22 August 1806) was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific art ...
,
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (; 16 April 1755 – 30 March 1842), also known as Madame Le Brun, was a French portrait painter, especially of women, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Her artistic style is generally considered part o ...
,
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough (14 May 1727 (baptised) – 2 August 1788) was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of ...
,
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and
Auguste Rodin. Represented American artists include
Benjamin West
Benjamin West, (October 10, 1738 – March 11, 1820) was a British-American artist who painted famous historical scenes such as '' The Death of Nelson'', ''The Death of General Wolfe'', the '' Treaty of Paris'', and '' Benjamin Franklin Drawin ...
,
Gilbert Stuart,
Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist and the founder of the Hudson River School art movement. Cole is widely regarded as the first significant American landscape painter. He was known for his romantic landscape and history painti ...
,
Albert Bierstadt
Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was a German-American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was not ...
,
Edmonia Lewis
Mary Edmonia Lewis, also known as "Wildfire" (c. July 4, 1844 – September 17, 1907), was an American sculptor, of mixed African-American and Native American ( Mississauga Ojibwe) heritage. Born free in Upstate New York, she worked for most of ...
, and
John Singer Sargent. Modern and contemporary holdings include
Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler (December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011) was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s u ...
,
Yayoi Kusama
is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, and is also active in painting, performance, video art, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attribute ...
,
Nancy Holt
Nancy Holt (April 5, 1938 – February 8, 2014) was an American artist most known for her public sculpture, installation art, concrete poetry, and land art. Throughout her career, Holt also produced works in other media, including film and pho ...
, and
Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson (January 2, 1938 – July 20, 1973) was an American artist known for sculpture and land art who often used drawing and photography in relation to the spatial arts. His work has been internationally exhibited in galleries and mu ...
. The museum's non-Western collections have particular strength in works from
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
,
Polynesia
Polynesia () "many" and νῆσος () "island"), to, Polinisia; mi, Porinihia; haw, Polenekia; fj, Polinisia; sm, Polenisia; rar, Porinetia; ty, Pōrīnetia; tvl, Polenisia; tkl, Polenihia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of ...
, and
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica ...
.
Restitution of art stolen in the Holocaust
In August 2004, the museum learned that an oil painting that had been stolen during
The Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
had found its way into the museum's collection by donation in 1993. The museum returned the art to the heirs of its original owner.
The piece was the 18th-century ''Les Amoureaux Jeunes'' by
François Boucher.
It had been stolen by Nazi
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; ; 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German politician, military leader and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1 ...
from the collection of French Jewish art gallery owner Andre Jean Seligmann during the Nazi occupation of France.
Suzanne Seligmann Robbins, Andre Seligmann's daughter-in-law, said: "Honor this museum and the people in it and the University of Utah for what they have done with such honor, with such diligence, with such integrity."
Events and programs
The Utah Museum of Fine Arts offers family, adult and children's programs along with tours for visitors. Activities include self-guided visits of the galleries, hands-on art projects, films, lectures, and informative guided tours. Family programs offer studio art activities on the third Saturday of each month. Adult programs include painting classes, lectures, and fine arts film series. Children's programs include special summer classes where children may combine history with art making. There are also classes for parents and their children from ages 2–5 to learn how to paint and sculpt.
Past exhibitions
Exhibitions at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts generally change on a two to three month basis. Some examples of past exhibitions since 2007 include:
*''Power Couples: The Pendant Format in Art,'' curated by Leslie Anderson. This exhibition showcased art from the 16th century through the present that reflected ideas of daily life and social hegemony within various cultures and societies. Each of the artworks on display were created in pendant format, an art form that presents a single work of art in two parts (Jul. 11, 2019 – Dec. 8, 2019).
*''American and Regional Art: Mythmaking & Truth-Telling,'' curated by Leslie Anderson, re-envisions the museum's American and regional galleries to present depictions and themes of
westward expansion and migration throughout the 19th century. (2018 – ongoing).
*''The British Passion for Landscape: Masterpieces from National Museum Wales'' (Aug. 28 - Dec. 13 2015) was a world-class exhibition of masterworks from Amgueddfa Cymru-
National Museum Wales
National may refer to:
Common uses
* Nation or country
** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen
Places in the United States
* National, Maryland, c ...
, charting the development of landscape painting in Britain from the 17th to the 20th century, including works by
Claude Lorrain,
Richard Wilson,
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough (14 May 1727 (baptised) – 2 August 1788) was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of ...
,
John Constable,
J.M.W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 177519 December 1851), known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbule ...
, and
Claude Monet
Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. Durin ...
.
*''Splendid Heritage: Perspective on American Indian Art'' (February 10, 2009 – March 1, 2010) premiered an exhibition of cultural and artistic treasures from the John and Marva Warnock Collection with 149 objects from the native people of the Northeast and Plains.
*''
Monet
Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...
to
Picasso from the
Cleveland Museum of Art
The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on the city's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian ...
'' (June 23 – Sept. 21 2008) included
Impressionist,
Post-Impressionist and Early Modernist paintings from 100 years of European masterworks in an international touring exhibition.
*''Suitcase Paintings: Small Scale Work by
Abstract Expressionists'' (Jan. 19 – Mar. 29 2008) which included around sixty works of intense beauty that exhibited energy found in larger works.
*''Andy Warhol's Dream America'': Screen prints from the Collection of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation (Oct. 4, 2007 – Jan. 6 2008) included around 100 screen prints by internationally acclaimed artist
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the Art movement, visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore th ...
.
*''Cinderella: Masks, Magic and Mirrors'' (Sept. 2 – Mar. 31 2008) which included materials from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. This exhibit explored key themes from
Cinderella
"Cinderella",; french: link=no, Cendrillon; german: link=no, Aschenputtel) or "The Little Glass Slipper", is a folk tale with thousands of variants throughout the world.Dundes, Alan. Cinderella, a Casebook. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsi ...
including the magical mirror.
*''Picturing the West: Masterworks of 19th Century Landscape Photography'' (Oct. 6 – Dec. 30 2007) included 32 nineteenth-century American Western
landscape photographs.
See also
*
Mormon art
References
External links
UMFA's Official Website
{{Authority control
Art museums and galleries in Utah
Institutions accredited by the American Alliance of Museums
Museums in Salt Lake City
University museums in Utah
University of Utah
Art museums established in 1951
1951 establishments in Utah