November Events @ UMFA (SLC)


Media contact:
Shelbey Peterson, 801-585-1306
Shelbey.Peterson@umfa.utah.edu

Utah Museum of Fine Arts
November 2010

Add a dash of art and culture to your itinerary this November
with salt 2: Sophie Whettnall and other exciting events at the UMFA!


SPECIAL EXHIBITION:

salt 2: Sophie Whettnall
November 18, 2010 – February 27, 2011
salt 2: Sophie Whettnall is the second in the UMFA's new series of exhibitions that showcase the work of contemporary artists from around the world. Belgian artist Sophie Whettnall (b. 1973) works mostly with photography, video, and multimedia installations, yet she was trained as a painter and much of her work retains a rich, painterly quality. Whettnall engages the temporal nature of video as a medium, creating images that inhabit a space between stillness and activity as they develop over time. Frequently training her camera on the landscape, she explores the relationship between the self and its surroundings in a world of increasing transience and dislocation. salt reflects the international impact of contemporary art today, forging local connections to the global, and bringing new and diverse artwork to the city that shares the program's name.


SPECIAL FREE EVENTS:

Highlights of the Collection Tour
First Wednesday of the month at 6:30 pm and all Saturdays and Sundays at 1:30 pm
Explore the UMFA galleries through a thirty-minute tour with a trained docent. No pre-registration necessary.

Anthropology Film Series: O Caminho das Nuvens (The Middle of the World), Brazil, 2004
Wednesday, November 3 • 6 pm
The UMFA is teaming up with the University of Utah Department of Anthropology to present a series of films from around the world that highlight art and anthropology. In O Caminho das Nuvens, documentary filmmaker Vincente Amorim chronicles the plight of a Brazilian family as they search for new beginnings in a country under change. Romao and his wife, Rose, decide to head from the northwest provinces of Brazil to Rio de Janeiro, a 2,000 mile journey, with their family of five, and meet repeated hardships along the way.

Visiting Artist Talk: Chakaia Booker
Thursday, November 4 • 7 pm
Join the UMFA Young Benefactors for a free public lecture by Chakaia Booker, the selected 2010 YB acquisition artist. Booker will discuss Discarded Memories, the sculpture acquired for the UMFA by the Young Benefactors last fall. A New York City-based artist, Booker is known for her dynamic sculptures created from twisted rubber tires.

Anthropology Film Series: Moolaade (Magical Protection), Somalia, 2004
Wednesday, November 10 • 6 pm
The UMFA is teaming up with the University of Utah Department of Anthropology to present a series of films from around the world that highlight art and anthropology. Director Ousmane Sembene won the Un Certain Regard prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival for Moolaade, a controversial drama that tackles the traditional practice of female genital mutilation. Four girls scheduled for this ritual of purification escape the village elders and seek shelter with a sympathetic woman named Colle, who casts a powerful ‘moolaade’ spell of protection over them. Defying sacred village tradition, she refuses to lift the spell even while dealing with a drama concerning her own daughter who has fallen in love with the future tribe leader.

Middle East Teacher Workshop: Morocco
Saturday, November 13 • 9 am–3:30 pm
The University of Utah’s Middle East Center Outreach Program and the UMFA are proud to sponsor a workshop that will look at the country of Morocco—its culture and customs, its history and legacy. Teachers at all levels and anyone interested in learning more about this fascinating topic are invited to attend. The event is free, but registration is required as space is limited. To register, call the Middle East Center at 801.581.5003.

Chamber Music Series
Wednesdays, November 17 • 7 pm
The UMFA will resonate with sounds of the season this fall as students from the University of Utah School of Music perform chamber music masterpieces in the European galleries. Visit umfa.utah.edu/calendar for more details.

Visiting Artist Talk: A Conversation with Sophie Whettnall
Thursday, November 18, 2010 • 6 pm
Join UMFA Acting Chief Curator Jill Dawsey for a public conversation with salt 2 artist, Sophie Whettnall. Learn about Whettnall's artistic practice and philosophy, and be among the first to experience salt 2.

Third Saturdays for Families: Self-Portrait Holiday Cards
Saturday, November 20 • 2-4 pm
On the Third Saturday of every month, UMFA Curators of Education develop exciting opportunities for children and families to learn about art and investigate how it is made. On this particular Third Saturday, we will print our own set of cards just in time for the holidays! We will study the clothes, poses, and surroundings of the UMFA’s most popular portraits and then create our own.


ONGOING EXHIBITIONS

Painting Utah’s Mount Olympus
On view through November 14, 2010
Mount Olympus is not the tallest mountain in the Wasatch Range, but anyone who has seen this awesome natural wonder will agree with the early pioneers who bestowed it with the Greek name for ‘the home of the gods.' For the past 150 years, some of Utah's most talented artists, including Lee Greene Richards, Gilbert Munger, Edwin Deaken, Anton Rasmussen, David Meikle, and others, have attempted to do justice to this silent sentinel. Through their work, the home of the gods is immortalized in Painting Utah’s Mount Olympus.

Community: Eat, Work, Play
On view through January 9, 2011
Big canvases, bold colors, and intriguing ideas are on offer in Community: Eat, Work, Play. With the help of UMFA educators, first- and sixth-graders from Lincoln Elementary School created large-scale murals that visually represent the various aspects of the title: eat, work, and play.

The Ideal Landscape
On view through February 13, 2011
Chinese landscape paintings do not recreate a natural setting, but instead conjure an ideal scene imagined by the artist. As a result, these intricate depictions of mountains and bodies of water offer expressions of the painter’s heart and mind. This fall, the UMFA will bring together thirteen Chinese landscape paintings dating from the Ming dynasty to the twentieth century in The Ideal Landscape, an exhibition that will be installed in the UMFA’s second-floor LDS Galleria.

Trevor Southey: Reconciliation
On view through February 13, 2011
This retrospective of the life and work of artist Trevor Southey gives prominence to four life passages that have defined Southey’s character and art: his youth in Rhodesia and education in England; his life as a practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and his desire for a utopian lifestyle created around family, farming, and art; Southey’s decision to acknowledge his homosexuality in 1982, which coincided with the first major public awareness of the AIDS epidemic; and the reconciliation of his life decisions as expressed in his revised artistic approach to the human form. This exhibition is generously supported by the B.W. Bastian Foundation, Jim Dabakis and Stephen Justesen, and Tom and Mary McCarthey.

Yayoi Kusama: Decades
On view through February 13, 2011
Yayoi Kusama: Decades offers a focused presentation of exemplary works by renowned Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. A key figure in the New York art world of the late 1950s and 1960s, Kusama’s pioneering work has galvanized subsequent generations of artists. From her early watercolor paintings of the 1950s to her “accumulation” sculptures of the 1960s, to recent, large-scale “infinity nets” paintings, the exhibition highlights works from each decade of the artist’s long career.

Faces: Selections from the Permanent Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art
On view through February 13, 2011
This exhibition brings together classic works of Pop Art and more recent Pop-inflected works, with a focus on the human face and figure. Many works in the exhibition take the form of portraits, such as Alex Katz’s series of screen prints depicting young people in the 1970s, or ironic self-portraits, as in Robert Arneson’s Untitled Trophy (Bust Of Bob), 1978. Faces also includes a selection of Andy Warhol’s famous Polaroid portraits, a recent gift from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, on view at the UMFA for the first time. Ranging from portraits of the rich and famous to unknown figures, Warhol’s Polaroids revel in the idiosyncrasies of his subjects.


####


Utah Museum of Fine Arts
University of Utah Campus
Marcia & John Price Museum Building
410 Campus Center Dr
Salt Lake City, Utah 84112
(801) 581-7332

Museum Hours
Tuesday–Friday: 10 am–5 pm
Wednesday: 10 am–8 pm
Saturday and Sunday: 11 am–5 pm
Closed Mondays and holidays
Visit our website: umfa.utah.edu

General Admission
UMFA Members FREE
Adults $7
Youth (ages 6-18) $5
Seniors & Students $5
Children under 6 FREE
U students, staff & faculty FREE
Higher education students in Utah FREE