Artist's Rendering of SUSC Administration Building (SUU's Bennion Building), completed 1973, L. Robert Gardner (Courtesy of L. Robert Gardner Collection, SUU Special Collections and University Archives)
L. Robert Gardner: Cedar City Mid-Century Modern
Southern Utah Museum of Art October 14, 2023 - March 2, 2024
When L. Robert Gardner (1918-1992) returned to his hometown of Cedar City in 1948 to open his own architecture practice, he was the only licensed architect between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. He had graduated from MIT and cut his teeth in northern Utah, but ultimately Gardner made his mark across the southern part of the state and bordering regions, designing dozens of residential, institutional, and commercial structures over the course of four decades. A product of his time, Gardner designed buildings that exemplify mid-century modernism, contributing to the suburban development of rural Cedar City. Drawing from Gardner’s expansive archive, held in Southern Utah University’s Special Collections, this exhibition illuminates the profound impact of L. Robert Gardner on the built environment and architectural history of the university and its wider community. A selection of his campus, residential, commercial, and civic buildings serve not only to demonstrate the breadth of his work and its impact but also to illustrate the key attributes of mid-century modern architecture.
Vitus Shell, Ice Cream Man: White Fragility, 2021, Mixed media, Courtesy of the Artist.
A Dream Deferred: New Perspectives on Black Experience in the Work of Aïsha Lehmann and Vitus Shell
Southern Utah Museum of Art June 10 - September 23, 2023
In connection with Utah Shakespeare Festival’s production of A Raisin in the Sun, SUMA engaged two artists–Aïsha Lehmann and Vitus Shell—to contribute works that reflect and respond to the themes of the play, and express how they reverberate into the present. Lehmann created a new body of work that centers on the intersections of race, health, and societal opportunity across America, during the time of the play and today. Drawing on the data visualizations W. E. B. Du Bois created to explain the circumstances of Black Americans for the 1900 Paris World Fair, Lehmann overlays demographic information onto maps of U.S. cities and the state of Utah. Her infographics offer a profound education on how systemic racism affects populations of color in different ways across the country. The contradiction of these harsh realities with the gentle aesthetic of her prints only intensifies their message. Vitus Shell’s Ice Cream Man series features a Black man against collaged white backdrops, from which expressions like “Fragility,” “Guilt,” and “Rage” subtly emerge.
Louis Ribak, Blue Peach Abstract, c. 1960, Oil on canvas, Courtesy of Modern West Fine Art, SLC.
The Space Between: Visions of the Southwest
Southern Utah Museum of Art June 4 - September 24, 2022
The infinitely expansive horizons and ruggedly majestic terrain of the Southwest’s high deserts have enraptured generations of artists. For Indigenous artists, traditional materials, forms, and symbols connect their original work to their ancestral lands. For many transplanted artists, on the other hand, immersion in this enchanting landscape has inspired departures from convention and new experimentations with color and abstraction. The Space Between brings together works from four artists who represent the past, present, and future of abstract art forged in the creative crucible of the desert: Louis Ribak (American, b. Lithuania, 1902-1979) and Beatrice Mandelman (American, 1912-1998), the groundbreaking forces behind Taos Modernism; and Arlo Namingha (American, Tewa/Hopi, b. 1974) and Shalee Cooper (American, b. 1978), two exciting contemporary artists who embody the enduring legacy of their predecessors and the new visions emerging from this environment. Echoing the dynamism of the desert, these artists engage space, shape, and scale in parallel but different ways, each finding meaning where these elements meet and in the spaces between.
Buddha Amitabha (S1997.28), Courtesy of Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of Art
Encountering the Buddha: Art and Practice Across Asia
National Museum of Asian Art October 14, 2017 - January 17, 2022
This exhibition brings together more than two hundred artworks, spanning two millennia, to explore Asia’s rich Buddhist heritage. These pieces represent the diverse schools that arose from the Buddha’s teachings, and the manifold ways that Buddhists have utilized and interacted with objects as part of their practice. Two immersive spaces—a Tibetan Buddhist shrine room and a film installation centered on a stupa in Sri Lanka—as well as various interactive stations allow visitors to delve deeper into the meaning of the artworks and their place within the Buddhist communities they served. (Co-curated with Debra Diamond & Robert DeCaroli)
Human Currents: The World’s Largest Pilgrimage as Interpreted by Hannes Schmid
The Rubin Museum of Art July 22 - November 13, 2011
From January to February 2001, tens of millions of pilgrims assembled in Allahabad, North India for the Maha Kumbh Mela festival, held only once every one hundred forty-four years. Photographer Hannes Schmid was there as these pilgrims of all ages, castes, and classes from every corner of India gathered by the banks of the sacred Ganges River, capturing this massive act of faith on film, both still and moving. Schmid’s large, color photographs and aerial-angled movie bring to life the claustrophobic crowds, myriad colors, and energy of this greatest of Hindu pilgrimages.
Photograph by David De Armas; Courtesy of Rubin Museum of Art
Photograph by David De Armas; Courtesy of Rubin Museum of Art
Patterns of Life: The Art of Tibetan Carpets
The Rubin Museum of Art April 8 - August 22, 2011
This exhibition presents the variety of styles, motifs, and functions of Tibet carpets, an important artistic tradition that serves aesthetic and practical purposes in both monastic and domestic spheres. The visual language shared between Tibetan decorative art and fine art is explored through complementary paintings and sculptures from the museum’s collection.
Body Language: The Yogis of India and Nepal
The Rubin Museum of Art January 28 - July 4, 2011
Sadhus, the vividly decorated or completely nude wandering ascetics of Hinduism, are the subject of striking photographs by Thomas Kelly in this exhibition. Sadhus use their body like a canvas for telling stories, using colors and symbols to represent esoteric inner visions and higher states of consciousness while also expressing their religious identities. Their markings, called tilakas, can range from a simple daub of color to fantastically complex designs utilizing the entire face and body. Body Language focuses on the rich symbolism behind sadhus’ painted bodies, postures and practices.
Photograph by Thomas Kelly
Photograph by David De Armas; Courtesy of Rubin Museum of Art
A British Life in a Mountain Kingdom: Early Photographs of Sikkim and Bhutan
The Rubin Museum of Art August 6, 2010 - January 10, 2011
This is the first exhibition of photographs by John Claude White, presented in original prints and large-scale reproductions from two important albums on view. A British government officer and civil engineer, White spent much of his career stationed in places that one hundred years ago were, and to an extent still remain, shrouded in a certain veil of mystery: India, Nepal, Sikkim, Tibet and Bhutan. He was a pioneer of mountain photography, spending weeks at a time visiting every corner, trekking every valley, and climbing every mountain pass in Sikkim, all the while photographing his official and personal explorations there and in Bhutan.
Tradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond
The Rubin Museum of Art June 11 - October 18, 2010
This is the first exhibition of contemporary Tibetan art in a New York City museum. The nine Tibetan artists featured each explore contemporary issues—personal, political, and cultural—by integrating the centuries-old traditional imagery, techniques, and materials found in Tibetan Buddhist art with modern influences and media. Trained in traditional painting and the strict interpretations prescribed by Buddhist religion, these artists break the spiritual formulas and artistic norms by experimenting with alternative media and extracting sacred symbols from their religious context, repurposing them for self-expression. (Co-curated with Rachel Weingeist)
Photograph by David De Armas; Courtesy of Rubin Museum of Art
ADDITIONAL EXHIBITIONS
Feb - July 2010 In the Shadow of Everest: Photographs by Tom Wool, Rubin Museum of Art, New York
Dec 2009 - May 2010 Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Expanding Universe (co-curator, Hindu and Jain Cosmologies), Rubin Museum of Art, New York
Sept 2009 - Feb 2010 Victorious Ones: Jain Images of Perfection (in-house curator), Rubin Museum of Art, New York
Dec 2008 - May 2009 Color and Light: South Asian Embroidery (in-house curator), Rubin Museum of Art, New York
Oct - Dec 2008 A Shower of Jewels: Wealth Deities from the Rubin Museum of Art, Oglethorpe University Museum of Art, Atlanta
Sept - Dec 2008 Buddha in Paradise: Tibetan Art from the Rubin Museum of Art, Robert Hull Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont
May - Aug 2008 Buddha in Paradise, Rubin Museum of Art, New York
April - Aug 2008 Earthly Immortals: Arhats in Tibetan Painting, Rubin Museum of Art, New York
Oct 2007 - April 2008 Bon: The Magic Word (contributing writer), Rubin Museum of Art, New York