{"id":62504,"date":"2010-10-10T11:13:58","date_gmt":"2010-10-10T17:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=62504"},"modified":"2022-03-21T11:21:41","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T17:21:41","slug":"slideshow-of-shame-the-utah-arts-council-wants-to-give-you-your-work-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/slideshow-of-shame-the-utah-arts-council-wants-to-give-you-your-work-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Slideshow of Shame: The Utah Arts Council Wants to Give You Your Work Back"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Boxcar 5 by Christopher Shill from the 2004 Statewide Annual<\/p><\/div>\n

It’s time again for the Utah Arts Council’s Statewide Annual Exhibition. Which means we have a lot of work by artists across the entire state not accepted into the show that will need to be picked up by its owner. Undoubtedly only about half those artists will bother to pick it up. The biggest problem is when our traveling exhibition program travels work around Utah for 9-12 months. Those artists seem to forget their work existed or maybe don’t care to see it again.<\/p>\n

Help me out here: Why don\u2019t some artists want their work back? Art is expensive right? It\u2019s expensive to make and it\u2019s expensive to buy, so why do artists ignore my emails and voice mails? It\u2019s like they don\u2019t care if they ever see their work again.<\/p>\n

The exhibits we travel across the state with the Traveling Exhibition Program tend to accumulate the most work. Earlier this year unclaimed works from the Hogle Zoo\u2019s World of the Wild exhibit were lined up along the bookshelves of my office. Immediately after I had to deal with the Springville Museum of Art\u2019s All-State High School Show. I\u2019m going to be honest and say high school students are the worst \u2013 they\u2019re too mobile. Most were seniors when they loaned us their work so a lot of those kids have moved away to college or flown off to foreign countries for two years. I have to rely on next of kin to claim their art. It\u2019s rarely successful. In fact, I just sent off an email reminder and about half of their emails had delivery failures. Awesome.<\/p>\n

The small closet behind my desk houses stacks of paintings and photographs from TEP shows plus other exhibits from shows here at the Rio Gallery \u2013 mostly from the Statewide Annual Exhibition. My closet is not the permanent resting place for orphaned work though. No, my closet is more of a halfway house for unclaimed art. When someone from years past calls and says they want to pick up their painting from several years ago I go retrieve it from our storage facility and bring it to my office. When the artist doesn’t show up in the next week or so I move their work to the closet. But it\u2019s about time now for the closet stuff to rejoin the storage stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cStorage\u201d is where we threaten to send artwork if it isn\u2019t picked up on the dates we specify in our notification letters. It\u2019s not a bad place. It\u2019s well maintained and secure; it\u2019s just not in my immediate care. On the last day of pickup for the\u00a0World of the Wild<\/em>\u00a0show only six artists had come to retrieve their work. This is when I make phone calls, reminding people to come and get their work for heaven\u2019s sake. You wouldn\u2019t believe the resistance I get from some people. Sometimes it\u2019s like pulling teeth. I won\u2019t name names.<\/p>\n

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City Scene by Chase Estes from the 2002 All State High School exhibit<\/p><\/div>\n

A few years ago I decided to dig in and do some serious unclaimed art returning. I pulled out every single piece from storage. Many of them have labels with the artists name and the date of the show it was part of. Most dated 2004, 2005, but I had some that went back to 2001. (You might be surprised that we keep stuff for this long. But you\u2019d also be surprised at the phone calls we get from artists wanting a painting that they didn\u2019t pick up 10 years ago.) I called every phone number. I\u2019d say most of them were disconnected or wrong numbers. I did get a couple artists saying, \u201cOh yeah\u2026I\u2019ll come get that this week.\u201d So I moved them to the halfway closet. I think one person came.<\/p>\n

I know some of these artists pretty well; I\u2019ve worked with them. Some of them I\u2019ve even seen in the past year, but just like them, I forget we have their artwork. If I was on top of it I\u2019d say, \u201cHey, take this while you\u2019re at it.\u201d Some of them are my Facebook friends. In fact, last year about this time I saw one of these artists pop up on my chat list. I immediately sent him a message, \u201cHey, when do you want to come and get your giant painting from 4 years ago?\u201d He was there within the hour. Score. Never underestimate the efficiency of Facebook.<\/p>\n

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Early Stage by Tai Loc Hyunh from the 2004 or 2005 Statewide Annual<\/p><\/div>\n

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Leon Oliver by Kent Miles from the 2009 Statewide Annual<\/p><\/div>\n

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Bowl of Pears by Adam Grimshaw from the 2002 All State High School exhibit<\/p><\/div>\n

Back in 2001 we had about three weeks of dead time at the Rio Gallery. I decided I would hang all the unclaimed artwork. Many had no identification whatsoever. I had no clue how to get a hold of the artist, let alone who the artist was. It was actually mildly successful and I had two pieces claimed from that show.<\/p>\n

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Dancing Orange by Jossy Lownes from the 2002 Statewide Annual<\/p><\/div>\n

I always threaten to have an unclaimed art auction or sale or at least another exhibit \u2013 an expos\u00e9 that shames the neglectful artist. But the gallery is too busy these days. These days, however, virtual galleries are almost as visible \u2013 maybe even more so.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s decided. I give you the \u201cSlideshow of Shame.\u201d If you see something that\u2019s yours \u2013 give me a call. If you see something you want, give me a call (kidding). (Kind of).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s time again for the Utah Arts Council’s Statewide Annual Exhibition. Which means we have a lot of work by artists across the entire state not accepted into the show that will need to be picked up by its owner. Undoubtedly only about half those artists will bother […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":781,"featured_media":62509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visual_arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/94.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-18 15:33:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/781"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62504"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62513,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62504\/revisions\/62513"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}