Utah Museum of Fine Arts
The Utah Museum of Fine Arts is an art museum in Salt Lake City , the capital of the US state of Utah . It is both the University of Utah and the state's art museum . The museum was opened on May 6, 1951, but the history of the collection begins at the beginning of the 20th century.
history
At the beginning of the 20th century, a small gallery was set up in the attic of the Park Building in Salt Lake City, which was the forerunner of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Initially, it showed works by artists from the region in just one room. In the decades that followed, the University of Utah's Fine Arts Department received major donations of artwork and requests to convert the gallery into a museum. After a renovation of the premises, the director of the university, Albert Ray Olpin , opened the Utah Museum of Fine Arts on May 6, 1951.
In 1967, Frank Sanquinetti was appointed the museum's first professional director. At this point the collection had expanded to such an extent that a new and larger museum building was needed. This was obtained in 1970. The aim of the museum management during this time was to further expand the collection. For this purpose, local and regional support was sought, so that the expansion was mainly supported by patrons , local and national clubs and associations, the university, as well as other citizens and above all the state of Utah. The increasing number of exhibits and stocks again led to space problems, so that in 1998 the construction of a new building, supported by donations, began. In June 2001 the museum opened in the Marcia and John Price Museum Building . That same year, David L. Dee was appointed director of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.
Since the second move, there has been continued strong growth in collection and an increase in activities. In February 2005, the Utah Parliament declared the museum a federal institution, underscoring the importance of the institution to the state.
collection
The collection includes over 17,000 works. It includes departments on African , American , Asian , Oceanic and European art, as well as Greco-Roman antiquity , modern and contemporary art , pre-Columbian , Native American and regional art.
Individual outstanding works of art are an allegory of the earth by Pieter Brueghel the Younger , Princess Eudocia Ivanovna Galitzine as Flora by Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and American Portrait of Mrs. Benjamin West and Her Son, Raphael by Benjamin West . Modern works such as American Wizard by Helen Frankenthaler or American Flags II by Jasper Johns can also be seen.
Special exhibitions
Special exhibitions have been presented regularly since 1961. The first exhibition was The Early Coptic Art of Egypt . Since then, there have been exhibitions on various genres of art as well as retrospectives on individual artists, observations of individual epochs and regions. Examples of such exhibitions are Russian Stage and Costume Designs for the Ballet, Opera and Theater: A Loan Exhibition from the Lobanov-Rostovsky, Oenslager and Riabov Collections from 1968 and objects from Buddhist cultures from 1971, as well as the 1975 exhibition LeConte Stewart: Retrospective , the 1987 exhibition Three Photographers: Susan Makov, Craig Law, and John Telford, and the 1990 exhibition My Beloved Is Mine: Marriage and Womanhood in the Jewish Tradition . Another focus of the exhibition is the presentation of collections from private individuals, but also museums such as the Museum of Modern Art .
The most successful exhibition to date is Monet to Picasso from 2008, in which loans from the Cleveland Museum of Art were shown. Within four weeks, almost 15,000 people visited the heavily advertised exhibition, which means an average of over 500 visitors per day. In total, the museum had over 50,000 visitors.
Web links
- Official website
- Items. In: Salt Lake Tribune , on the museum's first blockbuster exhibition
Individual evidence
- ↑ Article. In: Salt Lake Tribune , on the museum's first blockbuster exhibition; Retrieved July 23, 2008
Coordinates: 40 ° 45 ′ 36.8 " N , 111 ° 50 ′ 36.1" W.