Early summer shows at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art: Out Loud 2025, 2025 Gala Art Exhibition: The Factory

Early summer is always special at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA). The Utah Review looks at two of the latest exhibitions, including Out Loud: 2025 and the works by 57 Utah artists that are available in the 2025 Gala Art Auction: The Factory. OUT LOUD: GROWING PAINS A wonderful lead-in to the Utah … Read more

Two exhibitions at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art with strong sociological themes: Amanda Smith’s Trust Issues, Holly Rios’ I’d Like to Return This Body

Two  current exhibitions at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) point to substantial sociocultural epiphanies:  Amanda Smith: Trust Issues (through May 3) and Holly Rios: I’d Like to Return this Body (through May 31). Visitors also are encouraged to visit the galleries for three shows featuring ceramic artists from the recent the National Council … Read more

Form (in)Formation: Material Gallery hosts exhibition sponsored by National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Numerous local art events are associated this week with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA)’s 59th conference which is being held in Salt Lake City. For a feature about the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) and NCECA’s three cornerstone exhibitions, see this feature link. No better opportunity for … Read more

Utah Museum of Contemporary Art hosts three cornerstone exhibitions for National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Numeorus local art events are associated this week with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA)’s 59th conference which is being held in Salt Lake City. The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) is home to NCECA’s three cornerstone exhibitions. Also, Material Gallery is hosting an exhibition Form (in)Formation: see … Read more

The 53rd Utah All-State High School Art Show at Springville Museum of Art sets a high benchmark in visual arts excellence

Among the nation’s largest and longest-running student art shows of its kind, the 53rd edition of the Utah All-State High School Art Show is once again a splendid manifestation of the visual arts talent in the Beehive State’s art education programs. As in many other programs for young creators, producers and artists, this show exemplifies … Read more

LFO exhibition at Material Gallery is superb collaboration, with Andrew Rease Shaw’s music, Mary Toscano’s quilts

The late composer Pauline Oliveros said deep listening was central in her creative process.  “As a musician, I am interested in the sensual nature of sound, its power of synchronization, coordination, release, and change,” she wrote. More recently, Polygonia, DJ and producer of ambient music, added, “It’s the little details which make the timbre of each … Read more

Fascinating portal into history, memory, preservation of Native American artistic, cultural heritage: Russel Albert Daniels — Wild Roses at Material Art Gallery

Perhaps the most significant impact of contemporary Native American artists is that their output affirms that their respective Indigenous cultures and people will always be here and the media in which they create their art, by reflecting upon their experiences in contemporary society, means they are always breathing life into their cultures. A multidisciplinary photographer … Read more

The act of memory as art: Current Utah Museum of Contemporary Art exhibitions offer impressive scope for viewer to absorb

The act of memory as art, viewed within a far-reaching scope of how it reverberates through human expression, is the dominant theme in the current exhibitions at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA).  The Utah Review summarizes each of the shows:  IN MEMORY: continuing through Feb. 22, 2025 In a review of a rare … Read more

The compelling political power of remembrance: Fazilat Soukhakian: Under the Same Sky at Material Gallery

In recent decades, Iranian visual artists — photographers, painters, filmmakers and animators — have communicated through their work how the politics of history and memory are the cogent pivotal driving forces of constructing and preserving identity, which has been under existential threat since the 1978-79 revolution that toppled the Pahlavi dynasty and installed an Islamic … 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

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