facebook-pixel

A Georgia O’Keeffe painting and other works from the Smithsonian will visit Utah Museum of Fine Arts

(Image courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum) Georgia O'Keeffe's 1932 oil painting "Manhattan" is one of three works from the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection that will be on display for a year, starting Oct. 25, at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, both museums announced Monday, July 8, 2019.

  | July 8, 2019, 9:44 p.m.
| Updated: July 9, 2019, 10:49 p.m.

Three classic paintings from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s collection — including a Georgia O’Keeffe skyline of New York and a Thomas Moran landscape of Utah’s Kanab Canyon — will be displayed starting this fall at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.

The display is one facet of a collaboration between the Washington, D.C.-based Smithsonian and five Western museums, backed by a $2 million grant from two foundations, Art Bridges and the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Smithsonian announced Monday.

Starting Oct. 25 and running through Oct. 4, 2020, three paintings from SAAM’s renowned collection of American art will be shown at UMFA. They are:

• Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1932 painting “Manhattan,” a stylized rendition of New York skyscrapers.

• Thomas Moran’s 1892 landscape “Mist in Kanab Canyon, Utah,” one of the many images the artist captured from his travels through the West.

• Alma Thomas’ 1972 striped abstract painting “Red Sunset, Old Pond Concerto.”

A fourth artwork, Diego Rivera’s 1931 oil painting “La Ofrenda,” will also be on display starting Oct. 25, in a separate loan from Art Bridges.

(Image courtesy Smithsonian American Art Museum) Georgia O'Keeffe's 1932 oil painting "Manhattan" is one of three works from the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection that will be on display for a year, starting Oct. 25, at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, both museums announced Monday, July 8, 2019.

The exhibition is part of a five-year collaboration among SAAM and five museums in the western United States, called the American West Consortium. Besides UMFA, the member museums are: The Boise Art Museum in Boise, Idaho; the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno; the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene, Ore.; and the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Wash.

The collaboration also will bring together works from the Western museums’ collections for a touring exhibition. That tour will start in early 2021 at the Whatcom Museum, then go to the other four Western museums, and end at the Smithsonian in 2023.

The collaboration also will bring training and other professional-growth opportunities to staff at the Western museums.

Loaning these works is part of the Smithsonian’s “responsibility to share our most valuable resource —our collections — with the American people, including those who are not able to visit Washington, D.C.,” said Stephanie Stebich, the Margaret and Terry Stent director of SAAM.