December Events @ UMFA (SLC)


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

Utah Museum of Fine Arts
December 2010

Celebrate the season with inspiring art and festive events!


SPECIAL EXHIBITION:

Don Olsen: Abstracts from Nature
Opens December 2, 2010
This special exhibition commemorates the 100th birthday of abstract Utah artist Don Olsen (1910-1983). Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, abstraction was unfamiliar to many local audiences, and Olsen’s work was often misunderstood. Today, however, he is acknowledged as one of the most influential and gifted abstract artists to have worked in the region. A student of Hans Hoffmann, Olsen created abstract expressionist works using volumes, colors, and shapes derived from nature. Through large-scale paintings spanning more than forty years, Don Olsen: Abstracts from Nature will highlight prominent works from the artist’s oeuvre.

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.

2nd Annual UMFA Holiday Trunk Sale!
Wednesday, December 1 • 4-8 pm
It’s a free, fun-filled shopping day at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, and you’re invited. Listen to holiday music, enjoy tasty treats, and stock up on unique, hand-crafted gifts from Salt Lake City’s finest consignment artists. Find that hard-to-shop-for person the perfect gift with a personal touch. The trunk sale was so much fun last year, we’re making it a tradition! For more information email store@umfa.utah.edu. Thanks to Salt Lake County taxpayers, the ZAP (Zoo, Arts and Parks) Fund enables us to open our doors to Utah residents free of charge on the first Wednesday of each month, which falls on the 2nd Annual UMFA Holiday Trunk Sale.

Day With(out) Art
Wednesday, December 1 • 10 am-8 pm
The UMFA will participate in its annual observance of World AIDS Day by covering a selected work of art from the permanent collection. On December 1, 2010, the UMFA will conceal the beautiful Sowei helmet mask located in the central gallery of the Africa: Arts of a Continent exhibition. The mask’s case will be covered with a black cloth during visiting hours in recognition of Day With(out) Art, a worldwide event that aims to acknowledge the complex issues surrounding the lives of artists and other individuals living with HIV or AIDS. Thanks to Salt Lake County taxpayers, the ZAP (Zoo, Arts and Parks) Fund enables us to open our doors to Utah residents free of charge on the first Wednesday of each month, which falls on Day With(out) Art this year.

Chamber Music Series
Wednesday, December 8 • 7 pm
The UMFA will resonate with sounds of the season this winter 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.

Third Saturdays for Families: Porcelain Plates
Saturday, December 18 • 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. Through hands-on art studio projects and Museum tours, families explore their own creativity while using art from the UMFA’s collection and current exhibitions as a source of inspiration.


ONGOING EXHIBITIONS

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.

salt 2: Sophie Whettnall
On view through 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.

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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