Backstage at the Utah Arts Festival 2022: 50th Utah All-State High School Art Show traveling exhibition set for The Gallery at Library Square

A toilet that did not work turned out to be the unexpected inspiration for Sophie Santos when she created her digital painting, Solution 5: Oyster Mushrooms to Combat Oxidized Oil Spill. “I was actually stuck in the nastiest motel when I started working on Solution 5,” the Olympus High School student said in an email … Read more

Mitsu Salmon’s Somatic Tracing outstanding performance art exhibition at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art

The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA)’s Artist-in-Residence program (A-I-R) has recently produced a fascinating string of exhibitions by artists who are pushing out of the conventional boundaries of discipline, medium and display forms. Mitsu Salmon is continuing this emerging trend as the program’s first performance artist with Somatic Tracing, which will continue through June … Read more

With some new features, more than 90 cultural groups, 17 food vendors, Living Traditions Festival set for May 20-22 in downtown Salt Lake City

There is no doubt that Utah’s population, especially within the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, is becoming more diverse and cosmopolitan. In the 2020 census, one out of every three individuals in Salt Lake County identified their ethnicity as other than white. And, a large majority of the state’s current population of more than 60,000 … Read more

A delightful musical journey for families: Bachauer set to close its 2021-22 concert season with Hsiang Tu’s The Ivory Menagerie

Pianist Hsiang Tu knows how to play to an audience, especially when it involves, as he describes it, 50 third-graders. Professor Tu, who currently is on the Virginia Tech faculty and previously taught at Utah Valley University and Snow College, was inspired to curate a recital of short piano works based on animal themes, which … Read more

Bounty of excellent news from Utah Museum of Fine Arts: Handstitched Worlds: The Cartography of Quilts, salt 15: Horacio Rodriguez, acquisition of Chiura Obata works for Japanese collection

The early spring has brought new exhibitions to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts at The University of Utah, including a traveling exhibition of quilts, organized by the American Folk Art Museum, and a fascinating, unique show by Salt Lake City artist Horacio Rodriuguez. Also, UMFA recently shared news of a major acquisition for its … Read more

Five Utah Museum of Contemporary Art exhibitions include shows about sociopolitical culture, coping with grief, queer community in Salt Lake City, short film about Indigenous culture, an artist’s spiritual reconciliation in relationship with father

Five exhibitions round out the early spring slate at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA), including a major exhibition about contemporary political engagement, an exceptional show that translates the literary memoir genre into a visual art synthesis by an artist from the Carolinas, a celebration of queer voices in Salt Lake City, a regionally … Read more

Sundance 2022: Utah’s film industry continues to grow; finds solid representation in slimmer festival slate

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Part I is an overview of the Utah film industry in the current moment. Part II (tomorrow) will offer a summary preview of the Sundance 2022 feature-length and short films, which The Utah Review will cover. It was so close. Three weeks before Sundance 2022 (Jan. 20–30) was slated to open, organizers had … Read more

Achieving community in the art of Woodshedding for aspiring songwriters in Spy Hop program

Y’all just better be just turnin’ back if you want this boy to win ‘Cos practice is the only cure for the predicament he’s in Now devil, it would be a sin for you to get my bow You go on back to hell and to the woodshed I will go Johnny, are you practicing … Read more

Free Plan-B Theatre offerings of Radio Hour Episode 15: Sleepy Hollow, Alli and #3 signify strengths of two of company’s outstanding programs

RADIO HOUR EPISODE 15: SLEEPY HOLLOW For Plan-B Theatre’s Radio Hour series, in addition to his original science fiction episodes, playwright Matthew Ivan Bennett has penned outstanding adaptations of Frankenstein, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s only Christmas-themed short story The Blue Carbuncle.  But, his latest adaptation, which premiered last week in … Read more

Live performances continue to return in first-class fashion: season openers for Repertory Dance Theatre, Bachauer concert series, NOVA Chamber Music Series, Pygmalion Theatre Company

Four more local performing arts organizations have now launched their seasons with live performances, vividly reminding audiences just how impressive Salt Lake City’s cultural scene is as it returns to its pre-pandemic pace. Beginning its 56th season, the Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT) offered North Star, celebrating the work of choreographer Lar Lubovitch, including two selections … Read more