Murals once painted in the Intermountain Indian School are now presented as framed artworks in Repainting the I at NEHMA, spotlighted in a formal gallery setting that contrasts with their original dormitory and communal spaces.

In a world where authenticity is prized, we often treat the physical object with much more reverence than its photographic representation. But two exhibits at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA) complicate that notion. Repainting the I: The Intermountain Intertribal Indian School Murals presents 11 murals that once adorned the walls of the Intermountain Indian School, while Eagle Village: Sheila Nadimi offers 36 20×20 in. photographs drawn from hundreds of images Nadimi captured of the school over a 25-year period. Nadimi’s images include photographs of the murals in situ, adding a layer of context missing from the restored works themselves.

Established in 1950 in Brigham City, the Intermountain Indian School was a federally funded residential boarding school for Navajo youth. By 1974, the school had expanded to include students from more than 100 Native Nations. Like other boarding schools across the United States, Intermountain was part of a larger system of assimilation, yet art played a distinctive role within its walls. Apache artist Allan Houser, who had gained national attention for murals he created at the Department of the Interior Building in Washington, D.C., came to the school shortly after it opened and encouraged students to create murals that celebrated their cultural heritage. Some of these were official, like the murals Houser created in Intermountain’s theatre and gymnasium, but others were painted directly on dorm room walls, reflecting both the students’ connection to home and to larger popular culture.

The mural program flourished even after Houser left the school in 1962, but much of this creative output was lost over time. As the school buildings deteriorated and were eventually bulldozed, many of the murals were reduced to dust. When Utah State University acquired the property in 2013, a small number of murals were discovered in a garage—saved by a community member before the final demolition. Over the past several years, NEHMA has worked with Intermountain alumni, scholars, and tribal leaders to restore these works. Now, for the first time, these restored murals are available for public viewing.

Sheila Nadimi’s Eagle Village series documents the slow decay of the Intermountain campus, capturing not only architectural remnants but also the student-made murals that remained hidden within. The mural Returning Home Mural from Intermountain Intertribal Indian School , circa 1950, can be seen in the rear.

 

Nadimi’s photographs, quiet and observational, offer an intimate glimpse into the personal spaces once inhabited by students.

The murals displayed in Repainting the I include a range of artistic styles. Some are large, detailed works that reveal technical skill, while others are more modest, less polished images—expressions of youthful creativity that speak to the conditions in which they were made. The exhibition brings these murals out of their original context, presenting them as framed artworks under gallery lighting.

Nadimi’s Eagle Village photography series offers a different view. Nadimi first set out to photograph the Intermountain campus in 1996, documenting the site’s transformation as the buildings decayed and were eventually razed. Her images convey a sense of mapping—recording both the architecture’s physical presence and the remnants of the lives once lived there. The photographs capture the school’s exterior—the uniform dormitories, gymnasium, and maintenance buildings—but also reveal traces of its former inhabitants inside. These interior images often feature murals, but not the prominent ones created in communal spaces. Instead, they depict intimate, personal decorations in individual dorm rooms—reminders of the students’ attempts to claim their spaces in a system designed to erase their identities. One of the more compelling images shows a wall-high mural of Disney’s Goofy in ceremonial dress, viewed through a partially demolished wall.

The juxtaposition of these two exhibits is striking, even as both suggest the complex history of the Intermountain Indian School. While the murals in Repainting the I have been cleaned, patched, framed, and spotlit, their impact is curiously muted. As individual aesthetic objects, most do not shine. Stripped of their original context, they seem like artifacts—distant remnants of the past. Nadimi’s photographs, through their quiet documentation of lived spaces, resonate with a deeper sense of presence: they suggest lives unfolding, students marking their spaces, asserting themselves and leaving behind traces of their stories.

A wall-sized mural of Goofy in feathered regalia—one of the more poignant images captured by Nadimi—reveals how students blended pop culture with Native identity in the face of erasure.

Repainting the I: The Intermountain Intertribal Indian School Murals and Eagle Village: Sheila Nadimi, Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Logan, through January 17, 2026.

Shawn Rossiter

The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.