Trib ignores visual arts | The Salt Lake Tribune

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

I'm thinking that maybe a few pages fell out of my 2012 year-end review in Sunday's The Mix. In all of the arts items, I saw nothing at all about the visual arts. What the heck is up with that?

Two of Utah's most important visual arts institutions have been in the news in the past year. Adam Price, the lively and innovative director of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, departed. (Apparently, a few board members and some staff left with him. Not that that's been, or will be, reported, of course.)

The Utah Museum of Fine Arts made considerable progress in 2012, bringing us strong exhibitions, which, in the visual arts arena, more than rival many of the music and theater presentations that Sunday's Tribune did remind us of.

The visual arts have long struggled for notice in The Trib, where most of the time there's no competent critic assigned to that beat. Perhaps the newspaper's 2013 arts "Year in Review" will boast of a good writer consistently thinking and writing about the strong, active visual arts scene in Salt Lake City and in Utah. Now, that would be worth reporting.

Allen Dodworth

Salt Lake City