Tag Archives: Art Museums

Utah Art Museums

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Springville Museum of Art

Springville Museum of Art, Springville, Utah, Utah County, Fine Arts, History, Live Music Venue, Lectures

Utah’s first museum for the visual arts, this beautiful Spanish Morrocan Style building would be worth visiting even if there were no art. Dedicated as a “Sanctuary of Beauty and a Temple of Contemplation ” by David O. McKay, the Museum houses over 2,000 works; 1,500 of which are Utah art. The impressive collection of 150 years of Utah fine art, twentieth-century Soviet Socialist Realism and American art, and 15 exhibitions per year are displayed throughout 29 galleries.

The history of the Museum began in 1903, with the donation of two works of art to Springville High School by Cyrus E. Dallin and John Hafen. Dallin became famous for his heroic depictions of the American Indian, and Hafen for his sensitively rendered impressionistic landscapes. In 1907 several Utah artists agreed to donate paintings to the school, including James T. Harwood, John B. Fairbanks, and Mahonri M. Young. The students became interested in art and collecting, and began purchasing paintings and sculptures through an “Art Queen” program. Each student paid a penny per vote. The girl with the most votes was named queen, and the funds were used to purchase artwork for the Museum’s collection.

Cultural and educational offerings at the Museum have expanded over time in response to community desires and needs. A Paris Salon-style exhibition was put on in 1921 by the High School students, which has continued as the Annual Spring Salon to this day.  In 1925 the Museum, then called the High School Art Gallery, became incorporated.  Generous donations from the Smart, Steed, and Lund-Wassmer Collections have strengthened the Museum’s permanent collection.  By 1935 the collection had grown so much that the students and townspeople raised $100,000 during the Great Depression to construct the present facility.  The Museum has since been expanded and modernized with the addition of the Clyde Wing in 1965, and the George S. and Delores Dore Eccles Wing in 2004.  The latest addition doubled the size of the facility, adding 20,000 square feet to the Museum.

Springville Museum of Art
126 East 400 South Springville, UT 84663

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Union Pacific Railroad Station

The Salt Lake City Union Pacific Depot is a spacious building located in the new Gateway District, next to the Jazz Basketball Arena in Salt Lake City, Utah. Built from 1908 to 1909 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Originally called the Union Station, it was jointly constructed by the San Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake Railroad and the Oregon Short Line, both later wholly owned by the Union Pacific at an estimated cost of $450,000. Both railroads’ initials were prominently displayed on the front of the building.

The sandstone building is constructed in the French Second Empire style and includes a terrazzo floor and stained glass windows. One ceiling mural by San Francisco artist Harry Hopp depicts the driving of the Golden Spike north of Salt Lake City at “Promontory Summit,” signifying the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869. Another mural by San Francisco artist John McQuarrie shows the 1847 arrival of Mormon pioneers to what is now Salt Lake City.

Several side rooms were originally used for separate male and female waiting areas. The depot once housed an emergency hospital, lunchroom, baggage rooms, and offices for both of the original railroads.

In January 2006, three floors of the old Union Pacific depot re-opened as a restaurant and music venue fittingly called The Depot. The Depot brings a wide variety of musical talent to Salt Lake City.

Union Pacific Depot
18 N Rio Grande St, Salt Lake City, UT 84101

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Museum of Peoples and Cultures

The MPC is Brigham Young University’s archaeological and anthropological museum. The University now has four museums – the Paleontology museum, the Museum of Art, the Bean Life Science Museum, and the Museum of Peoples and Cultures (MPC).

Museum of Peoples and Cultures
Brigham Young University
700 North 100 EastProvo, Utah  
(801) 422-0020

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Wood Carvers Annual Exhibit

Woodcarving Exhibit, Annual, Payson, Utah, Utah County, Peteetneet Museum Arts and Crafts, Family, Free

Utah Valley Woodcarvers Club

The Wood Carvers’ Exhibit is a yearly exhibit featured by the Utah Valley Woodcarvers Club, whose goal is to promote and increase interest in and appreciation of woodcarving; including intarsia, woodturning, pyrography, gourd carving, and other mediums.

September (Week 4) Annually

Wood Carving Show
Utah Valley Woodcarvers Club
Veterans Memorial Building
400 North Main Street, Spanish Fork

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Harmed – Art Gallery Exhibit

Harmed, a body work by artist Stephanie Wilde (Boise, ID) is about the corporate greed of the few and its devastating effects on the many. She began this series of intimately detailed ink, acrylic and gold leaf works as a response to idle gossip in her backyard: a local corporate CEO misused his power in the mid 1990’s and the scandal made national headlines. Perplexed, Wilde wondered how this individual lost his moral compass. Considering the corporate downfall of companies since Wilde began this body of work, this is a question many of us find ourselves asking of today’s corporate leaders. Depicting the debauchery and excess of those in power as they control and manipulate circumstanced and others, Harmed is about loss: moral, financial and perhaps most disheartening, loss of faith in the corporate world.

Harmed Exhibit Salt Lake Art Center

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SHAOLIN: Temple of Zen

Over the past eight years, photographer Justin Guariglia has slowly but surely won the trust of the notoriously secretive warrior monks of the Shaolin Temple, a unique Chinese Buddhist sect dedicated to preserving a form of kung fu referred to as the “vehicle of Zen.” With the blessing of the main abbot, Shi Yong Xin, Guariglia has earned the full collaboration of the monks to create an astonishing, empathetic record of the Shaolin art forms and the individuals who consider themselves the keepers of these traditions. It is the first time the monks have allowed such extensive documentation of these masters and their centuries-old art forms – from Buddhist mudras to classical kung fu – in their original setting, a 1,500-year-old Buddhist temple.

http://www.uvu.edu/museum

 Shaolin Temple of Zen, Woodbury Art Museum

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Paintings from the Reign of Victoria

Free to the public! Paintings from the Reign of Victoria: The Royal Holloway Collection, London illustrates some of the highest achievements in figurative and landscape art of the nineteenth century. Acquired by Thomas Holloway to enhance the women’s college he founded in 1879, the collection includes many of the most visible and praised “modern canvasses” in London in the 1880s.

The Museum of Art is delighted to be one of seven American venues in this historic tour of a splendid collection of Victorian paintings from Royal Holloway College, University of London. Thomas Holloway, a highly successful British entrepreneur, amassed the collection between 1881 and 1883 for the art museum at the women’s college that he had just established. In one of the great spending sprees in art history, he purchased 77 paintings, almost all by outstanding contemporary British painters. In the process, he broke records for the highest auction prices for works of this period and acquired a number of major masterpieces.

All of the 60 works in this exhibition are painted in the meticulously realistic style popular in late 19th-century Britain. Their brilliant colors, fine craftsmanship, and, in some cases, large size give them great presence and emotional power. They include imaginative portrayals of historical events, picturesque landscapes, and dramatic scenes of Victorian urban and rural life. Visitors to this exhibition will see a remarkable cross-section of British artistic achievements at the apogée of the Empire’s prosperity and confidence.

http://royalholloway.byu.edu

Paintings From the Reign of Victoria