Utah Museum of Fine Arts

The Utah Museum of Fine Arts is the region's primary resource for culture and visual arts. It is located in the Marcia and John Price Museum Building in Salt Lake City, Utah on the University of Utah campus near Rice-Eccles Stadium. Works of art are displayed on a rotating basis. It is a university and state art museum.OverviewUMFA galleries are temporarily closed for remodeling and reinstallation and will reopen August 26, 2017. Many free public programs are continuing through the closure period, including the museum's popular Third Saturday for families, educational outreach, and ARTLandish: Land Art, Landscape, and the Environment. The UMFA's Dumke Auditorium, museum store, and museum cafe have reopened to the public.UMFA is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. It has a cafe and store located inside the building along with more than 20 galleries. The museums permanent art collections include over 17,000 works of art. The different cultures represented include African, Oceanic and the New World, Asian, European, American, and the Ancient and Classical World.HistoryThe creation of a formal art gallery on the top floor of the University of Utah's Park Building in the early 1900s marks the beginning of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. In the beginning, paintings by local artists filled this three-room gallery. Through the next six decades, the art department at the University of Utah received major art gifts and specific requests from donors to remodel the gallery into a museum. After the renovation of the gallery was finished, the University’s president, A. Ray Olpin, established it as the Utah Museum of Fine Arts on May 6, 1951. In 1967, Frank Sanquineti was appointed as the first professional director. By this time, the museum had entered a new period of growth which resulted in the building of a new museum.