Utah Art Professional Spotlights published in 15 Bytes, Utah’s art magazine, including profiles of gallery and art center directors, curators and more.
As a child, Liza Doran fell in love with the souks of Arabia. As a young woman, she fell for the textile traditions of Belgium. Then she was seduced by photographs of a beat-up stone building in Bluff, Utah. For the next 40 years, she learned what […]
Imagine if Salt Lake City gave $4.4 million in artist grants every year. And if you really want to get crazy, imagine all of it going to just two artists. A pipe dream, certainly. But on a per-capita basis, that’s roughly what happens in Boulder, Utah. For the […]
The warm, inviting style of 1930s Spanish Colonial architecture is one of many elements that makes the Springville Museum of Art distinctive. The focus on Utah artists, on the surrounding community, and on educational outreach—all critical to the museum’s mission and history—are others. But it’s the people that […]
Miri Kim recognizes the influence of Seventeen magazine in her art history trajectory. It was in the pages of the teen magazine that the BYU Museum of Art curator first heard of Rice University, which she left Utah for as a college freshman. At a preview week in […]
“It is so strange that simply placing two objects next to each other helps you to see each of them better. Sometimes it is what they have in common that is most striking, but I have always been drawn to the contrasts because they remind me of my […]
Phil Sherburne was born a carpenter, building since he made a chair for his sisters when he was 5 years old in the south end of the Salt Lake Valley. Inspired by French spoke-shave technique built by proletariats for their friends and family, Sherburne was charmed by the […]
When curator Jeff Lambson first arrived in Utah in 2007 to become the first curator of contemporary art at Brigham Young University’s Museum of Art, it felt like a moment. Contemporary art in the state was gaining momentum, and institutions that had not always been in conversation with […]
Some of the most visible arts experiences in Salt Lake City—the SLC White Party, the Urban Arts Festival, and Dreamscapes: Salt Lake City’s Immersive Art Experience—share more than spectacle or scale. They are part of a longer arc of creative entrepreneurship shaped by Derek Dyer, whose work has […]
< Meagan Evans, manager and curator of the newly renamed St. George Museum of Art, inside the museum’s upper gallery.[/caption] The first thing Meagan Evans did when she took the reins at the former St. George Art Museum this summer was change its name. “St. George Museum of […]
“Art is a human right,” says Sarina Villareal Ehrgott, Executive Director of the Bountiful Davis Art Center (BDAC). Coming up on her one-year anniversary at BDAC, Ehrgott reminisces on her past work and how it impacts the broad vision she has for the center in this year and […]
There’s a whole menagerie of people who work behind the scenes in Utah’s art community, doing both the heavy lifting and the heavy paperwork to get shows up, receding into the background to give the limelight to the artists being featured. Since 2017, James Walton has been the […]
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 […]
We feel everything she needed to know she learned as a writer for 15 Bytes (from 2018 to 2019), but there’s a chance Brigham Young University Museum of Art’s new Curator of Religious Art picked up a thing or two in other places. Like in Heather Belnap’s Women […]
There was no headline-grabbing announcement when Laurel Cannon Alder decided to leave the Utah Division of Arts & Museums. As grants manager, she wasn’t the public face of the division but rather one of the many art professionals who work in the community behind the scenes. And not […]
If you plan on scheduling a tour of the Salt Lake County art collection, be prepared. Kate Ithurralde’s enthusiasm for the largest publicly available collection of Utah art is infectious. She can dive deep into an individual work or range comfortably across the expanse of the collection, knitting […]
Karilee Park was frustrated with teaching art. Everything in the field seemed to be lacking: funding, engagement from students, respect from peers, personal enjoyment. All of which made her career choice unsatisfying—a career she hadn’t even planned on entering. Becoming a teacher was a matter of necessity for […]
“I see curation as a very collaborative process,” says Emily Lawhead, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts’ Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Off the bat, it’s clear that Lawhead’s approach to curation is abundantly refreshing and crystal clear. To Lawhead, curation is a communal practice, enlisting […]
Hikmet Sidney Loe left in the summer of 2021. Left Utah, that is. Moved her residence 385 miles south to Nevada, where she now teaches in the art history department at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Left Salt Lake City, where she had lived for decades, working […]
Because exhibitions are scheduled months, if not years, in advance, it may be a while before we see the curatorial hand of the Utah Museum of Fine Art’s new senior curator. But, with the goals she has set, Alisa McCusker has plenty to keep herself busy behind the […]
