USU 'Museum + Music' Imagining Community: Logan 1948-49

The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA) at Utah State University continues its ‘Museum + Music’ series with “Imagining Community: Logan 1948-49.” The ‘Museum + Music’ series aims to connect the visual with the aural by presenting music that relates to artwork in the museum’s collection. The event takes place Sunday, Oct. 22, at 3 p.m., in the Caine Performance Hall on the USU Logan campus. The event is free and open to the public.

The ‘Museum + Music’ series will continue at the Caine Performance Hall while the museum is closed for renovation and construction until its reopening in fall 2018.

This year, Museum + Music explores different conceptions of “community” suggested by the intersection of visual art and music. The first concert considers the artistic life of Cache Valley, and Utah in general, immediately following the Second World War. Roy Harris, a preeminent composer of American classical music at the time, and his wife Johana, a virtuoso pianist, accepted positions at Utah State Agricultural College (now Utah State University) in 1948. During their brief stay they contributed to Cache Valley’s cultural scene, propelled by New Deal programs. This concert will feature acclaimed French pianist Jean-Louis Haguenauer, a professor of Music at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, accompanied by Utah State University’s Bradley Ottesen, violist of Fry Street Quartet, and pianist Mayumi Matzen. Works from the NEHMA art collection dating from the late 1940s will be projected during the concert, juxtaposing art and music created during a period of immense change to Utah’s cultural landscape. 

This concert is guest-curated by Rika Asai, a faculty associate in the USU Department of Music with guidance provided by the Museum + Music curator, Associate Professor of Musicology Christopher Scheer.

NEHMA is located on the USU Logan Campus. The Museum is currently closed for construction but will continue to host events including Museum + Music at other venues like the Caine Performance Hall. October’s concert will be followed by “Imagining Community: Art, Music and The New Deal in the West” Sunday, December 3. See the museum’s website (artmuseum.usu.edu) to stay updated on NEHMA events.

Contact: Katie Lee-Koven, Executive Director, Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, 435-797-0163, katie.lee.koven@usu.edu