A Cultural Day Trip
A stunning 17th century French tapestry and 4,000-year-old neolithic pottery from China are among new exhibits greeting visitors to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) in Salt Lake City, which reopened last August aft er a year-long closure for extensive remodeling. The work was necessary to replace vapor barriers essential to the preservation of priceless artwork and also to refresh exhibit labeling and wall text to inspire individual interpretation.
The venerable museum has long been a popular winter destination for vacationing skiers in the Park City area seeking a sample of culture in nearby Salt Lake City. The state-of-the-art facility is just a half-hour’s drive from downtown Park City and easily accessible at the perimeter of the University of Utah Campus.
“We’re excited to welcome everyone back,” says Gretchen Dietrich, UMFA executive director. “Th e changes we’ve made in how visitors engage with the art and the Museum’s unique spaces will make the UMFA more relevant than ever in the lives of our audiences.”
During the closure, museum staff refreshed the look and feel of gallery exhibits. “I’m very proud of the re-imaging of the permanent galleries in beautiful and thoughtful ways,” says UMFA Director of Marketing and Communications Mindy Wilson. “It represents months of research by our curators, in collaboration with historical educators. We’re inviting visitors to interpret the works in their own ways, asking them to think about it and go within their own lives to find a connection with the art.”
The UMFA is unique in the West for the breadth and depth of the collection. “It’s encyclopedic, everything from Roman and Egyptian to meso-American antiquities, to contemporary artwork that was created specifically for us. We literally represent 5,000 years of human history and creativity. We’re the only museum between Denver and Sacramento that can provide that experience,” Wilson concludes.
