December 11, 2017 (Salt Lake City, UT) – As ground zero for Utah skiers and snowboarders, Salt Lake offers something no other winter destination can match: a roster of world-class performing arts venues and a collection of nationally recognized museums. It’s easy to spend a day in Utah’s famed powder and then catch Hamilton fresh from Broadway, attend a classical concert or check out one of the finest collection of dinosaur fossils in the world. Downtown Salt Lake hums with the energy and activity of one the liveliest arts scenes in the Rockies, while four classic “bucket list” ski resorts– Alta, Brighton, Snowbird and Solitude — lie at the city’s doorstep.
On Stage: Broadway, Ballet, Opera and Theater
The George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Theater opened in 2016 in the heart of downtown Salt Lake and features a dramatic six-story grand lobby with retractable glass walls along Main Street. Inside is the 2,500-seat Delta Performance Hall, designed for acoustic excellence, as well as a separate 150-seat, multi-use Black Box theater. A venue for Broadway-style shows as well as concerts, this winter the Eccles Theater is featuring productions of Hamilton, Riverdance, Something Rottenand Sound of Music, as well as a concert featuring Joe Satriani, John Petrucci and Phil Collen.
Abravanel Hall is the city’s premier concert hall. Part of the Salt Lake County Center for the Arts, it’s home to the Utah Symphony and Opera. This winter, The Utah Symphony, under conductor Thierry Fischer, presents a series of concerts marking Bernstein at 100. The Symphony is being joined for a performance by actor and singer Audra McDonald and extends a welcome to guest conductor Patrick Dupré Quigley.
The Janet Quinney Lawson Capitol Theatre is home to Ballet West, and this winter the company is performing Cinderella and The Shakespeare Suite. The Capitol Theatre is also home to the Utah Opera, which is staging Moby-Dick and Pagliacci/Gianni Schicchi this season.
The Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center is a prime venue for concerts, dance, ballet and theater. This coming season, performers ranging from Paula Poundstone to Turtle Island Quartet and pianist Artem Yasynskyy are scheduled to appear.
Museums for All Tastes
A monumental collection of dinosaur fossils are the most astounding exhibit at the Natural History Museum of Utah. The 161,000 square-foot, Gold LEED-Standard museum has eight permanent exhibit spaces featuring 1.2 million objects of natural history, and a 1,200 square-foot children’s gallery.
The Leonardo, dubbed “The Leo” by locals, was named after Leonardo da Vinci and created to be a visionary interactive museum of science, technology and art, housed in the former SLC Public Library. The Leonardo offers visitors exhibits, hands-on workshops and performances, and hosts major traveling exhibitions. It’s currently showing Flight, Woman/Women and Perception: The Illusion of Reality.
The Utah Museum of Fine Arts, located on the campus of the University of Utah and recently remodeled, is beloved for its holdings of European art from the 14th to the 19th centuries, including work by such artists as Fra Filippo Lippi, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Anthony van Dyck, Thomas Gainsborough, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and Auguste Rodin. It also has a fine selection of works by such American artists as Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, and John Singer Sargent. The institution has some of the most prestigious examples of 1970’s Land Art in the world, including Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” which lies in the Great Salt Lake.
The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, which was established in 1931, has a changing roster of exhibitions. The Museum is currently showing work by Anna Betbeze, Carol Sogard and Casey Parkinson.