Conrad Buff (1886-1975), Canyon Land, ca. 1935, oil on masonite.

On January 18th, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts will be closing its galleries to upgrade the vapor barrier system in the Marcia and John Price Museum Building on the University of Utah campus. The project is expected to take a year, with the galleries expected to be reopened, with a new installation of the museum’s permanent galleries, in Spring of 2017.

The UMFA will kick off its remodeling and reinstallation project with a celebratory weekend of free admission to the galleries and the Museum’s most popular art experiences. The Long Live Art! Kickoff Party on Saturday, January 16, and Sunday, January 17, is the public’s last opportunity to visit the UMFA before the Museum pauses its exhibition program. In anticipation of the museum’s closing, we’ve asked some local artists, art lovers and art professionals to tell us which piece from the museum’s permanent collection they will miss most over this next year We’ll be posting these in the weeks leading up to the Long Live Art! Kickoff Party (for more information visit http://www.umfa.utah.edu.

Conrad Buff’s Canyonlands is a personal favorite piece of mine at UMFA, and I will miss being transported to the dramatic and intense red rocks of southern Utah through this piece. I have been a collector of Buff’s work for years, drawn to his pioneering modernist style and ability to capture the western spirit in ways unseen before in the twentieth century. Buff’s talent of depicting intense desert formations with bold, brilliant contrasting colors and loose brushwork continually leaves me amazed. Conrad Buff was a true innovator and trailblazer of western art, and I will miss experiencing Canyonlands in person at UMFA.

– Diane Stewart, owner Modern West Fine Art

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.