News

The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) has been awarded two grants totaling $140,000 from The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts and VIA Art Fund | Wagner Foundation.

UMOCA Press is proud to announce the publication of Alise Anderson: My Grandma is a meme.

This Artists in Focus: Performances video features a special performance by LA-based artist xiouping during the opening reception for the exhibition i know you are, but what am i? on June 24, 2022, in the Main Gallery of the Museum.

Opening Friday, June 24, 2022, i know you are, but what am i? (De)Framing Identity and the Body focuses on the use of the figure, in contemporary art, to explore culture, identity, fluidity, body positivity––and to provide a space for self-authorship, unfiltered through the lens of others.

UMOCA has launched a new video series, Artists in Focus: Studio Visits, to shine light on the studio practices of Utah artists. The series will feature interviews with current and past UMOCA Artists-in-Residence and artists working in Utah. The second studio visit in this series features 2022 Projects Gallery Artist Jaclyn…

UMOCA has launched a new video series, Artists in Focus: Studio Visits, to shine light on the studio practices of Utah artists. The series will feature interviews with current and past UMOCA Artists-in-Residence and artists working in Utah. The first studio visit in this series features 2021-22 UMOCA Artist-in-Residence Alise Anderson, filmed in her studio space in The Museum.

Opening January 21, 2022, the exhibition Our Wake Up Call For Freedoms, a collaboration between the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) and the For Freedoms artist collective, examines creativity as a core societal value capable of creating political change. Timed to coincide with the 2022 Utah Legislative Session, this participative exhibition invites visitors to create their own yard signs, posters, and other visual materials associated with political campaigns and movements. Through this process, visitors are encouraged to consider the potential of creativity in the conception of radical, imaginative, and visionary solutions to social issues and identify how art can augment political problem-solving, which tends toward reactionary, zero-sum solution solutions.  

The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art is proud to announce the launch of its redesigned and expanded website. The website, utahmoca.org, provides enhanced access to the Museum’s expansive exhibition archives, events, and community programming to improve visitor experience at the Museum’s downtown Salt Lake City location. Utah-based design studio, Actual Source, in collaboration with New York-based design studio, A Lot of Moving Parts, and Utah-based web development firm, Cold Rice LLC, worked closely with the Museum’s Communications and Digital Content teams and the Board of Trustees’ Marketing Committee.

The donors to the institution we now know as UMOCA have made it possible for local art to be on display in Utah from the very beginning.  Despite the market crash in 1929, a mere two years later Utahns rallied together to collect donations to move forward with their vision of a gathering place for the arts in Utah.  Even after being told by the Governor at the time that it was “no time for a thing like that”, UMOCA’s founder, Alta Rawlins Jensen, moved forward with her vision. While the unemployment rate in Utah was astronomical, community fundraising took place everywhere, and through governmental support, financial aid, and much enthusiasm, the construction of the Art Barn was able to continue to completion.  

For the 2021-2022 school year, UMOCA is visiting schools throughout the state in our traveling photographic exhibition, Stronger Shines the Light Inside. Presented in collaboration with acclaimed photographer Angie Smith, the show illuminates the refugee experience in Utah through photography, video interviews, and quotes.