January 2013 Exhibitions and Events @ Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Various dates in January, Salt Lake City)

Utah Museum of Fine Arts
January 2013 Exhibitions and Events

SPECIAL EVENTS

Highlights of the Collection Tour
6:30 p.m. on the first Wednesday of the month and 1:30 p.m. on all Saturdays and Sundays |
FREE with general Museum admission
Experience the UMFA galleries through a thirty-minute tour with a docent. No pre-registration necessary.

Third Saturday for Families: House Sculptures

January 19 | 1-4 pm

The exhibition 5 Blocks shows how students in the Salt Lake region explored the five blocks around their school to create fantastic sculptures about their neighborhood.  At this Third Saturday, participants will be inspired by the 5 Blocks exhibition and make a sculpture of their house or another special building in their neighborhood.

Chamber Music Series

Wednesday, January 23 | 7 pm

Experience the harmonious convergence of music and art at the UMFA with a Chamber Music Series performance. A saxophone quartet from the University of Utah’s School of Music will perform a diverse concert. Each piece will be paired with a work of art displayed in the UMFA galleries to explore the connections between the live music and artwork exhibited. The performance is free and open to the public.

Disfarmer: The Cleburne Portraits

Lecture by Donna Poulton, Curator of Art of Utah and the West

Film Screening of Disfarmer: A Portrait of America

Wednesday, January 30 | 7 pm

In the small mountain town of Heber Springs, Arkansas, portrait photographer Mike Disfarmer captured the lives and emotions of the people of rural America during the two World Wars and the Great Depression. This lecture and documentary film situate Disfarmer as an American master by focusing on his influence in the modern Manhattan art world and the legacy he left behind in his hometown of Heber Springs. (Film Producer Dennis Mohr, Public Pictures, 2012)

ONGOING EXHIBITIONS

Mike Disfarmer: Cleburne County Portraits

Opens January 24, 2013

The Coen Brothers, Ralph Lauren and guitarist Bill Frisell are just a few artists who have found inspiration in the photographs of Mike Disfarmer. A small town photographer from Heber Springs, Arkansas, Disfarmer used glass plate negatives to create snapshot size photographs as keepsakes for the local community. The stark minimalism of his studio backdrops, especially those used during the 1930s and through the war years, effectively isolate his subjects and in doing so create intimate, deeply human portraits of them. The dignity of hard work and the vagaries of rural life can be read in the faces and demeanor of the many people who sat for his ‘penny portraits'.

salt 6: Emre Huner 

On view through January 13, 2013 

salt 6: Emre Huner features the premier of a new film by the Turkish, Berlin-based artist, whose work explores questions surrounding progress, modernity, science fiction, and utopian impulses.

Nancy Holt: Sightlines
On view through January 20, 2013
Nancy Holt: Sightlines will offer an in-depth look at the early projects of this important American artist whose pioneering work falls at the intersection of art, architecture, and time-based media. Since the late 1960s, Holt has created a far-reaching body of work, including Land art, films, videos, site-specific installations, artist's books, concrete poetry, and major sculpture commissions. Nancy Holt: Sightlines showcases the artist's transformation of the perception of the landscape through the use of different observational modes in her early films, videos, and related works from 1966 to 1980. With her novel use of cylindrical forms, light, and techniques of reflection, Holt developed a unique aesthetics of perception, which enabled visitors to her sites like Sun Tunnels (1973-76), located in Utah's Great Basin, to engage with the landscape in new and challenging ways.

Dale Nichols: Transcending Regionalism
On view through March 18, 2013

Dale Nichols is well known as the fourth major Regionalist artist, alongside Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton and John Stueart Curry. Their work, created in the Midwest during the Great Depression, defined a period in American art when artists turned toward the land and known narratives in hope of creating uniquely American themes and styles of art. The UMFA is delighted to offer Dale Nichols: Transcending Regionalism, an exhibition spanning much of his long career. Nichols' early paintings focused on the often-difficult relationship between Midwest farmers and their land. His stylized landscapes and red barns, representing both shelter and sustenance, held images of hope for a struggling nation and honored the agrarian ideal. By the 1940s Nichols indulged his wanderlust, traveling repeatedly to Alaska and spending extended periods of time in Guatemala and Mexico. Paintings from this period are represented in this exhibition as well.

5 Blocks
On view through April 21, 2013

5 Blocks is an exhibition of youth artwork created in collaboration with UMFA educators by students at Hawthorne Elementary (Salt Lake City School District) and Granger High School (Granite School District). By investigating a five block area near their school, students demystified how we shape the spaces we live in and how those spaces shape us. Through a variety of media, this exhibition shares with viewers what students discovered when they left the classroom and got a chance to engage with the city. During the planning of this exhibition UMFA educators consulted with Damon Rich, a nationally recognized designer and artist who currently serves as the Urban Designer for the City of Newark, New Jersey.

**Exhibition dates are subject to change.

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

Museum Hours
Tuesday–Friday: 10:00 am–5:00 p.m.
Wednesday: 10:00 am–8:00 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday: 11:00 am–5:00 p.m.
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
Active duty military personnel FREE
Thanks to the Salt Lake County Zoo, Arts, and Parks fund, the UMFA opens its doors for FREE on the first Wednesday and third Saturday of the month.