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Utah Museum of Fine Arts July 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.

Art Study and Studio (ages 8-12)
July 16-19 | 10 am–12:30 pm
This drawing and painting fundamentals course will teach you how to draw inspiration from the art that surrounds you; each session will involve close study in the galleries and then studio time to practice those art-making techniques.
$95 + $20 special fee. To register, call 801.581.6984 or visit www.continue.utah.edu/youth.

Artful Afternoon: Oodles of Doodles

Saturday, July 20 | 1–4 pm | FREE

Do you scribble, squiggle, and sketch? Make your mark at the UMFA with art-making, fun activities, and performances. Funded in part by Salt Lake County Zoo, Arts and Parks Program (ZAP) and eBay.

Making Art: Mom, Dad, and Me (ages 2-5)
SESSION 1: July 30–August 2 | 10 am–12 pm
SESSION 2: August 6–9 | 10 am–12 pm
This class is for parents and their pre-schoolers or pre-pre-schoolers, ages 2-5. Join the UMFA for hands-on art studio experiences inspired by art from the collection. $100 + $35 special fee. To register, call 801.581.6984 or visit www.continue.utah.edu/youth.

Peter Hassrick Talk: Taos Transformations and the Art of E. Martin Hennings

Tuesday, July 30 | 6:30 pm | FREE

Peter Hassrick, an independent scholar of art of the American West, will give a talk that addresses the unique artistic contributions made by the members of the Taos Society of Artists, paying special attention to E. Martin Hennings. This lecture is held in conjunction with Bierstadt to Warhol: American Indians in the West.

ONGOING EXHIBITIONS

Mike Disfarmer: Cleburne County Portraits

On view through July 14, 2013

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’.

Bierstadt to Warhol: American Indians in the West

On View through August 11, 2013

Bierstadt to Warhol: American Indians in the West is an ambitious exhibition comprising more than 100 works drawn primarily from the Diane and Sam Stewart Collection. It examines depictions of American Indian identity (by both Natives and non-Natives) in a diverse array of styles: from the traditional European schools to Modernist abstraction and conceptual renderings of cultural motifs. Subject matter focuses on the Pueblo people of Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico but other important and impactful portraits of American Indians are also included. Artworks range in tone from the romantic and ideal to the utterly real, sometimes taking on sensitive subject matter that is often inherent to contemporary American Indian identity. This exhibition negotiates the devices and implications of portraiture as a historical genre, to show that a portrait can either fashion a mythologized persona or an authentic personal dynamic that speaks to lived experience.

Drawing Lab

On View through August 25, 2013

This hands-on, interactive exhibition, in which visitors create the artwork themselves, is inspired by the idea that mark-making is a fundamental human impulse and that there is no wrong way to do it. UMFA educators developed five drawing stations to encourage visitors’ creativity: participants can contribute to a chalkboard drawing Museum staff have begun, do free drawing directly on a coffee table, draw from objects in the Museum’s permanent collection, create drawings with tape and paper, or contribute to a “metamorphosis” scroll drawing that will take shape over the course of the exhibition and incorporate the creativity of all participating artists. Visitors can also draw inspiration from I See the Fish, Finally, a collaborative, experimental wall drawing created by eight students from the University of Utah art department, who created the work during a three-day drawing “marathon” before the exhibition opened.

Lawrence Weiner:
BENT TO A STRAIGHT AND NARROW AT A POINT OF PASSAGE

A fascinating work of language sculpture by groundbreaking contemporary artist Lawrence Weiner is now on view in the UMFA G.W. Anderson Family Great Hall. Purchased by the Museum in 2011 with funds from the Phyllis Cannon Wattis Endowment for 20th Century Art, BENT TO A STRAIGHT AND NARROW AT A POINT OF PASSAGE (1976) is an important addition to the UMFA’s permanent collection of contemporary art and represents a canonical moment in art history.

http://umfa.utah.edu/lawrenceweiner

**Exhibition dates are subject to change.

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
Website: umfa.utah.edu