USU museum home to more than 4,000 objects
For an educational and cultural experience, students can go to the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art on campus. The museum was opened in December of 1982, according to the museum’s general information pamphlet. The 23,000-square-foot, four-level building was designed by Edward Larabee Barnes and shares an open sculpture plaza with the university’s art, music, landscape architecture and theater departments. “The museum is here as a great resource for students to learn from,” said Victoria Rowe, director and curator for the museum. The pamphlet states the museum contains specially designated exhibition spaces and is home to a collection of more than 4,000 objects. It is one of the largest museums in the Intermountain Region and represents a century of collecting works at USU. The museum displays wide range of media by modern, contemporary artists and contains artwork from 1900 to today, according to the pamphlet. Many of the objects were created from artists living or working in the western half of the United States. One of the collections is the Marie Eccles Caine Collection. According to the museum’s Web site, this collection of work offers new twists on the 20th-century American art. The core of the collection explores certain key historical moments, inluding Los Angeles post-surrealism, Santa Fe transcendentalism and Bay Area abstract expressionism. Another collection is the Nora Eccles Treadwell Harrison Ceramic Collection. The pamphlet explains that Nora Eccles Treadwell Harrison was an accomplished ceramist and a devoted collector. She donated nearly 500 ceramic objects to the museum. These objects are just the beginning of the continually growing ceramic collection, which presently holds more than 1,200 pieces. Artists include Maria Martinez, Ron Nagle, Robert Sperry, Peter Voulkos, Marguerite Wildenhain and many others. This collection has quickly become the largest regional storehouse for modern and contemporary American ceramics, according to the museum’s Web site. “The ceramic collection is a wonderful teaching collection,” Rowe said. “It is especially a great learning environment for students to use and to learn from.” The general information pamphlet also stated this museum hosts an average of 14 temporary exhibitions. These exhibitions are located on the second floor of the museum and are dedicated to objects that are strictly on loan to the museum. The length of each of these exhibits depends on the sponsoring institutions. “The traveling exhibitions seem to hit right to the core and encourage students to use all that the art museum has to offer them,” Rowe said. Another popular exhibit is the Sight and Sound Collection. The museum’s Web site states Sight and Sound consists of selected paintings and sculptures from the museum’s permanent collection and provides a glimpse of the revolutions in art and music that occurred during the 20th century. Located in two major galleries of the museum, this exhibition features listening posts where visitors can hear selections of works by 20th-century composers such as Edgard Varèse, Luciano Berio, John Cage, George Antheil and Terry Riley. The museum also collaborates with many different departments to help create a great learning atmosphere for the students. “Many students use art as a stimulus as writing,” Rowe said. “This week alone we have had many different classes coming to the museum to write about a specific piece of work.” This past spring, the art museum and English department teamed up to create an exhibit of May Swenson’s work. This exhibition paired Swenson’s poetry with work from other artists. “Our museum is very hands on,” Rowe said. “It can often drive me crazy, but it also involves many fun things.” For more information on the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, call the museum information line at 797-0163. To visit the museum, hours are from Tuesdays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. The museum is closed Sundays, Mondays and holidays. The museum is free to the public. -courtnie.packer@aggiemail.usu.edu