Art Professional Spotlight | Visual Arts

Katie Lee-Koven Reflects on Ten Years at NEHMA

Photograph of a smiling woman standing with her arms crossed in front of an art installation featuring colorful floating shoe-like forms in a contemporary gallery setting.

NEHMA Executive Director and Chief Curator Katie Lee-Koven. Image courtesy of Utah State University.

Katie Lee-Koven, executive director and chief curator of the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA), recently marked her tenth anniversary with the museum. Reflecting on her tenure, she noted her mission to transform NEHMA from a “hidden gem” into a leading academic and regional art institution. “On January 4th, 2014, [when] I stepped into the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art for the first time in my new role as executive director and chief curator … two things stood out to me: how did renowned museum architect Edward Larabee Barnes come to design a museum in Logan, Utah, in 1982, and how could such an incredible art collection remain largely unknown?” she says. “Major art museums (like the Whitney Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) borrow from us. We have some of the finest examples of art by some of the most significant American artists from the 20th and 21st centuries, yet it seemed that few people knew this. If I had to express one goal from the beginning, it has been for NEHMA not to be … appreciated and utilized to its fullest in its educational and community roles.”

Under Lee-Koven’s leadership, NEHMA has doubled its visitor numbers, expanded outreach programs, and grown its annual budget from $400,000 in 2014 to $1.8 million in 2024. NEHMA’s community impact has flourished through programs like the Mobile Art Truck and Exploring Art Kits, which served nearly 27,000 K-12 students in 2024, integrating art into core education standards across 24 school districts. Recurring initiatives for all ages, such as wellness courses, senior art classes, and summer camps, have further expanded the museum’s reach. The museum’s art collection has grown by 924 works, with a focus on underrepresented artists, and is now fully digitized, with 50% available in high-quality images online.

“These accomplishments would not have been possible without the trust and support of university leaders and the remarkable staff of NEHMA, who have been key to all these successes,” Lee-Koven says. “We have managed to be nimble, punch above our weight, and provide meaningful educational experiences and research for people of all ages and abilities, both near and far.”

Lee-Koven has also spearheaded two capital campaigns: a $5 million renovation in 2018 and a $7.2 million project culminating in 2025 with the opening of the Wanlass Center for Art Education and Research. The new facility, debuting April 29, will enhance education, research, and community engagement.

NEHMA’s newest exhibit, Repainting the I: The Intermountain Intertribal Indian School Murals, which runs January 24 to December 6, 2025, showcases eleven restored murals created by Native American students at the Intermountain Indian School, celebrating their cultural heritage and creative resilience within an assimilationist boarding school system. These vibrant works are on public display for the first time.

 

You can find some of 15 Bytes’ coverage of the NEHMA over the past decade here.

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2 replies »

  1. Katie Lee-Koven is an incredible arts leader and Utah is lucky to have her here! Congrats on 10 years!

  2. I am grateful forKatie Lee-Koven’s choice to pose in front of Trimpin’s wonderful wooden shoe instrument. This is an artist who does not permit recording of his suites for instruments he invents, so in order to hear his unique music it’s usually necessary to attend one of his live performances. The machinery that plays all those shoes is as close as we come to hearing the compositions it plays on demand, as technology has taught us to expect, and it remains one of the treasures not to be missed during any visit to the extraordinary museum that houses this delight among its vast and not to be duplicated collection.

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