Highlights of the Collection Tour
First Wednesday of every month | 6:30 pm
Saturdays and Sundays | 1:30 pm
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: Jewelry from India
Saturday, August 16 | 1–4 pm | FREE
Make a work of art that you can wear around town! Come experience an exhibition of images of Krishna, the eighth incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. Design your own anklet, a traditional ornament worn by Krishna, using glass beads and bells. The Museum Store will also host a special story time for children based on the month’s theme. Sponsored in part by Salt Lake County Zoo, Arts, and Parks Program (ZAP).
Fall Film Series: Creativity in Focus
Wednesday, August 27 | 7 pm | FREE
Co-presented with the Utah Film Center. Additional support provided by CUAC and Modern West Fine Art.
EXHIBITIONS
umfa.utah.edu/exhibitions_current
Krishna: Lord of Vrindavan
Opening August 8, 2014
A companion exhibition to Moksha: Photography by Fazal Sheikh, Krishna: Lord of Vrindavan explores the Hindu god Krishna through sacred and secular artworks, dating from the 11th century to the 20th, from the Museum’s Asian art collection. Krishna promised followers that through bhakti (devotion) to him, one could gain moksha (salvation). The exhibition will be presented in the Museum’s Emma Eccles Jones Education Gallery.
salt 9: Jillian Mayer
Closing August 17, 2014
“What’s the point of living offline anymore?” Jillian Mayer asks in her catchy sing-a-long MegaMega Upload. The artist debuted this hip-hop song on her YouTube channel in January 2013 before it premiered as part of her short film #PostModem at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Since then, the video has received 21,000 views and has inspired more than 160 viewer comments. In 2011 Mayer uploaded her song and video I Am Your Grandma, and it’s since received 2,445,525 views, 20,895 likes, 1,601 dislikes, and 7,970 viewer comments-not to mention the countless spoofs it’s inspired, including choreographed dances and remakes by five-year-olds, an Internet troll, college students, a fake plastic kitty, Darth Vader, Wes Borland, and a Cabbage Patch Kid.
But, what does it mean to upload your soul to the Internet or to leave a timeless video message for your unborn grandchild? Cloaked with humor, fast editing, and pop soundtracks, Mayer’s videos are designed for mass appeal but ask big questions about human connection and manufactured realities. Her work lives in, and is activated by, viewer participation. She investigates the (im)possibility of authenticity and the multiplicity of authorship by co-opting the visual language and tools of Google, online chat boards, and viral videos. Indebted to the cultural constructions of the 1980s sitcom but looking ahead to the infinite implications of the Internet, Mayer uses photography, video, drawing, installation, and performance to tease out the pathways and pitfalls of postmodern identity formation while considering our increasing integration with the web and questioning the distinction between reality and the virtual world.
Jillian Mayer (American, b. 1984, lives Miami) received her BFA from Florida International University in 2007. In 2010 her video Scenic Jogging was one of twenty-five selections for the Guggenheim’s YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video and was exhibited at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy; Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain; and Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany. Recent solo projects include Love Trips at World Class Boxing, Miami (2011) and Precipice/PostModem at Locust Projects, Miami (2013). In 2012 and 2013 Mayer’s short films were selected to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2013 Mayer was in residency in Berne, Switzerland, as a Zentrum Paul Klee Fellow and in New York City as an NEA Southern Constellation Fellow. umfa.utah.edu/salt
Lawrence Weiner:
BENT TO A STRAIGHT AND NARROW AT A POINT OF PASSAGE
Closing August 24, 2014
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. umfa.utah.edu/lawrenceweiner
Moksha: Photography by Fazal Sheikh
On view through November 30, 2014
Moksha: Photography by Fazal Sheikh weaves together the artist-activist’s portraits and the stories of a community of widows in the Hindu pilgrimage site of Vrindavan. A marginalized segment of Hindu society since ancient times, widows, many of them dispossessed of home and family, have few places of sanctuary. In Vrindavan, a city holy to the Hindu god Krishna, these women chant and pray every day in the hopes of obtaining moksha, release from the constant cycle of death and rebirth. The exhibition, comprising forty photographs by Sheikh, is on loan from the Princeton Museum of Art.
Fazal Sheikh has worked as a photographer since graduating from Princeton University in 1987. Primarily through portraits, he brings attention to marginalized peoples and groups around the world. His other projects include Ladli, A Camel for the Son, and Ramadan Moon. He has won numerous awards including the Henri Cartier-Bresson International Grand Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship.
Creation and Erasure: Art of the Bingham Canyon Mine
On view through September 28, 2014
Northern Utah’s Bingham Canyon Mine, the largest man-made excavation on earth, has been a source of fascination and inspiration for artists around the country since the mine’s earliest days. Spanning 1873 to the present, this exhibition presents paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs that examine the mine from a variety of perspectives, tracing its physical development as well as its effects on the local economy, culture, environment, and people. Featured artists include Jonas Lie, William Rittase, Andreas Feininger, Jean Arnold, Edward Burtynsky, and the Center for Land Use Interpretation, among others. The exhibition also includes photographs of the mine after the massive landslide of spring 2013, the effects of which continue to impact the mine’s operations.
**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