Educational

Fascinating, engaging parallels in art history: Utah Museum of Fine Arts’ inspired twin bill of Blue Grass, Green Skies, Photo-Secession

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Double exhibitions have become a specialty well mastered at The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) and the latest examples produce one of the most fascinating engagements with art history in a fresh perspective that resonates effectively with contemporary visitors.  Blue Grass, Green Skies: American Impressionism and Realism from the Los Angeles County Museum of … Read more

A detailed rundown of the slate of films for the 2024 Utah Queer Film Festival of the Utah Film Center

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The Utah Review has screened many of the films on this year’s slate for the Utah Film Center’s Utah Queer Film Festival. The following is a detailed run down of the entire slate of feature-length and short films. FEATURE FILMS Documentaries  The ABCs of Book Banning 2023/ USA/ Documentary (Sheila Nevins) While this MTV Documentary … Read more

Plan-B Theatre’s 12th annual Free Elementary School Tour production for 2024-25 academic year features EllaMental by Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin

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Within a few days after third grader Martin Richards from Boston was killed in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, a photo which showed the boy holding a sign he created that read ‘No more hurting people. Peace’ went viral. He made the sign a year before, when an activist who was protesting the handling of … Read more

The birth of Utah’s tremendous art movement: Springville Museum of Art’s exhibition Salon 100: A Retrospective of 100 Spring Salons and the Students that Built Art City

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When it comes to the founding of Utah’s tremendous art movement, its own “this is the place” moment occurred not in Salt Lake City nor Provo. Spanish Fork or Payson but instead in Springville, just about the same time as the town was being established in the 1850s. As Vern Swanson, retired director of the … Read more

Backstage at the 2024 Utah Arts Festival: Kids’ Art Yard to feature impressive array of hands-on activities focusing on the Great Salt Lake

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In recent years, many artists and creative producers have been building a critical mass of public awareness about the Great Salt Lake and its existential crisis. In 2023, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company premiered an evening-length dance theater piece, To See Beyond Our Time. Earlier this year, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art presented an impressive multidisciplinary … Read more

Utah Museum of Fine Arts’ Pictures of Belonging exhibition impressively commands viewers to think anew about American modernism

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In a 2007 essay, art historian ShiPu Wang wrote that the works of Asian-American artists “are more than painterly creations that exude ‘transcendental beauty’ beyond cultural boundaries.” He added, “Their meaning and significance constantly shift and expand under different sociopolitical circumstances, and they do not remain incontrovertible objects or artifacts.” In her 1990 book, Mixed … Read more

Finding Joy Together: Utah Film Center’s 13th Tumbleweeds Film Festival for Kids set for April 19-20 at Viridian Event Center

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With an excellent slate of family feature- and short-length films from around the world with hearty, intelligent and imaginative stories, the Utah Film Center is geared up for the 13th Annual Tumbleweeds Film Festival for Kids on April 19 and 20 at West Jordan’s Viridian Event Center.  With the Salt Lake County Library as partners, … Read more

A brief but significant note: The omission of the history of slavery in The Lehman Trilogy

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A friend who works in many roles in the performing arts community joined me for the opening of The Pioneer Theatre Company’s Utah premiere production of The Lehman Trilogy in The University of Utah’s new Meldrum Theatre. He agreed with the assessment in the accompanying review at The Utah Review, especially regarding the outstanding performances … Read more

Alam Khan, master of the sarod, set for SLC events sponsored by Mundi Project, India Cultural Center of Utah; Westminster Concert Series

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Alam Khan was seven years old when he started learning to play the sarod, a 25-string instrument with no frets which comprises strings for performing melodies as well as sympathetic strings to create resonating drone-like sounds. The head of the instrument, which resembles a lute, is made from sheepskin and the neck is metal plated. … Read more

Sundance 2024: Marking 100 years of Utah film and television history

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NOTE: This feature about 100 years of film and television in Utah is linked to the Part I curtain raiser for the Sundance Film Festival.  When James D’Arc came to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah as a student, he already knew some of Hollywood’s most famous names such as John Ford and John Wayne … Read more