If you’re down in Cedar City at the Utah Shakespeare Festival this week schedule a little time to catch Art Access Executive Director Ruth Lubbers at Southern Utah University’s Art Insights. On Thursday, September 1st, at 7 pm she’ll be speaking at the Centrum Arena at the SUU campus. Lubbers has had a mission in providing equal opportunities to inclusive arts programs for Utahns with disabilities and those with limited access to the arts, and she sums up her career in her presentation entitled Art, Disability and Community.

Lubbers, who retires this fall, has guided Art Access/VSA Utah since 1993, developing inclusive programs in the arts for people with and without disabilities. She moved to Salt Lake City in 1981 from Western Michigan where she had been Fine Arts Coordinator for the Muskegon Area Intermediate School District. Ruth was given the Honorary Alumna of the Year Award from the College of Fine Arts at the University of Utah in 2002 and was a member of the Salt Lake City 2002 Olympic Winter Games Arts and Culture Advisory Committee from 1998 through 2002. As director of the Art Access Gallery, she has been an active member of the Salt Lake Gallery Association, as well as a past president. In 2004 Utah Business Magazine and the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce designated Lubbers one of thirty Women of Vision in Utah for her contributions to the Utah arts community. Ruth recently served on the boards of the Utah Arts Festival and the Utah Museums Association, and currently serves on the board of Artists of Utah.

If you’re not able to make it to Cedar City, you can read about Lubbers, and one of the programs she started at Art Access, PARTNERS, in the September edition of 15 Bytes. The 17th annual exhibit of the program is currently up at Art Access Gallery, and a retrospective exhibition, and farewell to Lubbers, is scheduled at Williams Fine Art in September.

15 Bytes

UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.