Salt Lake City—The Utah Museum of Fine Arts new ACME Lab, The International Tolerance Project: Promoting Dialogue Through Design, features more than twenty artworks by international designers that illustrate the power of visual communication and encourage community dialogue around the unifying theme of tolerance. Featured posters were selected from a larger traveling exhibition, TOLERANCE, orchestrated by New York-based designer/illustrator Mirko Ilić. The UMFA exhibition is the centerpiece of a citywide display of TOLERANCE posters on view throughout spring 2019 coordinated by Salt Lake City-based artist Dallas Graham.
The International Tolerance Project: Promoting Dialogue Through Design is on view at the UMFA Thursday, January 17 through Sunday, June 23 at 7 pm. An artist talk with Mirko Ilić will be held on Wednesday, January 23. A series of hands-on art-making activities will engage Museum visitors in conversation about tolerance and acceptance. Talk and event details are below.
Together, the artists and curators hope to inspire viewers to consider their individual and collective roles in working toward a more accepting and understanding global society. The exhibition presents tolerance of others as a starting point toward the broader goal of acceptance.
Citywide displays of TOLERANCE posters involve a number of cultural and civic organizations and take a variety of forms. Participating organizations include AIGA Salt Lake, Pioneer Park Coalition, KRCL, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Co., Salt Lake County Arts and Culture, The BLOCKS, Salt Lake County Library, Salt Lake City Public Library-Main Library, Salt Lake Film Society, SB Dance, Ballet West, and Temporary Museum of Permanent Change. A map of all TOLERANCE-related exhibitions in Salt Lake City can be found at participating organizations.
TOLERANCE has traveled to eighteen countries around the world, including most recently South Africa, where the exhibition was on view at the Constitution Hill, now used as a museum, in Johannesburg, the infamous prison where Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and other notable activists were once imprisoned.
The UMFA exhibition is curated by the Museum’s director of education and engagement Jorge Rojas, ACME coordinator Emily Izzo, and UMFA graphic designers Jodi Patterson and Meredith Bunsawat. Graham, creator of The Red Fred Project, a national nonprofit publishing company, is the local liaison with Ilić.
This exhibition and ACME Lab is made possible, in part, by a generous gift from The JoAnne L. Shrontz Family Foundation.
Free Public Programs
Artist Talk | The International Tolerance Project: Promoting Dialogue Through Design with Mirko Ilić | Wednesday, January 23 | 7 pm | Katherine W. and Ezekiel R. Dumke Jr. Auditorium | FREE
Mirko Ilić, a New York-based designer and illustrator, will discuss his international traveling poster project, TOLERANCE, which is meant to help viewers see artists as promoters of tolerance and peace, and facilitators of the reconciliation process. Ilić will also speak about his book The Design of Dissent, co-written with Milton Glaser, which examines the influence designers have on communication relating to social and political concerns.
Presented in partnership with AIGA Salt Lake and The Red Fred Project.
Third Saturday for Families: Design Your Own Poster
Saturday, March 16 | 1–4 pm | FREE | Emma Eccles Jones Education Center Classroom
Come see The International Tolerance Project: Promoting Dialogue Through Design in the ACME Lab and learn about this poster project centered on the word “Tolerance.” Then create a poster that explores your own version of acceptance.
For more information call (801) 581-7332 or visit www.umfa.utah.edu
