Salt Lake City – [con]text, a new exhibition opening December 19 at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA), mines the UMFA’s richly varied permanent collection to explore the many ways in which visual artists have harnessed language to communicate, relate, entice, advocate and illuminate.
“Curators often start with a specific narrative goal and borrow pieces from other museums to support that story. But with [con]text, we ‘listened’ to the UMFA’s collection to discover the story it was trying to tell,” says Whitney Tassie, UMFA’s curator of modern and contemporary art. “[con]text incorporates the thousands of years and hundreds of cultures represented by these objects into a multi-voiced tale of how language’s constant evolution leads to the creation, loss and re-creation of meaning.”
Three UMFA staffers co-curated the exhibition—Annie Burbidge Ream, assistant curator of education for public school programs and statewide outreach; Luke Kelly, associate curator of antiquities; and Tassie.
The show juxtaposes objects of very different origin, time period, and material into five thematic groupings, says Burbidge Ream, to investigate how artists use language and text in their work to communicate, relate, entice, advocate and illuminate.
“We want visitors to take away the idea that language is not transparent or fixed but fluid and ever-changing,” Burbidge Ream says. “Artists who use text in art are playing off of this dynamism. Words, often seen as silent, stagnant forms or symbols of truth, are actually tangible entities that, like any other medium, can be manipulated.”
Related Programming
Third Saturday for Families: Word Art
Saturday, February 21 | 1-4 pm | FREE
[con]text explores text in art through objects from the UMFA’s permanent collection. Create your own visual and written art using old book pages as your inspiration.
For more information call (801) 581-7332 or visit www.umfa.utah.edu