The history of Springville
Springville, Utah, settled in 1850, grew around an art collection that began with donations to a high school in 1903 and became the state's oldest fine arts museum. The Spanish Colonial Revival building that now houses it was completed in 1937 with WPA, city, church and school-district funds.
Springville Museum of Art, at 400 South in Springville, Utah, grew from paintings donated to a high school in 1903 into a Spanish Colonial Revival building completed in 1937 with funding from the WPA, Springville City, the LDS Church and the Nebo School District. It remains the state's oldest fine arts museum.
A high school's donated art became Utah's oldest museum
The Springville Museum of Art is a Spanish Colonial Revival building that still runs as the oldest fine arts museum in Utah. Its clay-tiled walls and arched doorways sit at 400 South, built for a collection that began as a few donated paintings in a high school.
In 1903, the sculptor Cyrus E. Dallin sent a forty-inch bronze replica of his Paul Revere statue from Boston, and the painter John Hafen gave a canvas called Mountain Stream. Both men had grown up in Springville, and both gave their work to the local high school, not to any museum.
In 1907, three more Utah artists, including James T. Harwood, added their paintings, and high schoolers ran a penny-per-vote "Art Queen" contest to raise money for more. By 1925, Emma Smart and George Smart had donated 65 Utah artworks, and the school's little gallery had outgrown its walls.
Construction on a real building began on November 23, 1935, and the architect Claude S. Ashworth designed it in Spanish Colonial Revival style. The money came from everywhere at once. The Nebo School District gave the land, Springville City supplied $29,000 in materials, and the LDS Church added $20,000. The WPA covered $54,000 in labor, the only art museum in Utah ever built this way.
Workers fired the building's decorative tile on-site, mixing red clay hauled from Thistle with gray clay dug near Springville. Virgil Hafen, John's own son, oversaw that tilework. The Wright Planing Mill in town milled the red oak doors.
On July 4, 1937, Springville dedicated the finished building as part of its Independence Day celebration, and David O. McKay, an apostle of the LDS Church, gave it the words it still carries: "a sanctuary of beauty and a temple of contemplation." Wayne Johnson became its first curator.
Three families' deeds combined into one school parcel
The ground under the museum had three owners before it belonged to any school. In 1908, John H. And Mary E. Whiting deeded the land to Springville School District #01, and in 1916, Mary A. Fuller sold another piece of it to the Nebo School District. George L. And Martha A. Hyde added a third parcel in 1924. The county joined these pieces into a single lot of just over two and a half acres in 1926, nine years before any building went up on it.
A high school salon drew international art before a building existed
Springville High School had already started treating art as something worth a public show. In 1921, students organized an exhibition modeled on the Paris Salon, and it grew into the Spring Salon, an annual show that still runs today. In 1929, the gallery hosted a major exhibition by the Polish-American artist Stan Poray, fresh from a stint at the Imperial Court in Kyoto. A high school art collection was pulling in work from across the world before it had a proper building to hang it in.
One story about the land itself is told only as legend. Two years before Springville's own founding in 1850, the pioneer artist Philo Dibble is said to have imagined a fine arts museum for the Mormon people settling the valley.
The city took the building but kept its old name
The Nebo School District held the museum building until 1975, when it handed the property to the City of Springville. The city has owned the building ever since, though the land under it kept circling back to the school district for decades to come. In 1986, the building joined the National Register of Historic Places under an old name: Springville High School Art Gallery. The listing kept the name of the school that built it, even though by then it had been a public city museum for over a decade.
Two expansions and a sculpture garden doubled the museum
The museum kept growing through the turn of the century. In 1998, a 20,000-square-foot addition gave it classroom space built for children's art education, alongside new galleries for the permanent collection. A 2004 wing doubled the museum's footprint again. In 2009, the Sam and Diane Stewart Sculpture Garden opened outside, giving the building's grounds a collection of their own.
The land bounced between city and school district in days
The lot's paperwork took one last strange turn in September 2008. The Nebo School District quitclaimed the land to Springville City on the 10th. Eight days later, the city quitclaimed it right back to the school district. The two governments were untangling decades of overlapping ownership between the school district that built the museum and the city that had run it since 1975. Today the county lists the school district as the parcel's owner on paper, while the city continues to operate the museum inside it.
New directors carried the museum past its 80th year
Rita Wright took over as director in 2012, following longtime director Vern Swanson, and led the museum through its 80th anniversary celebration in 2017. Emily Larsen has served as director more recently. The museum still displays Utah art from pioneer days to the present, spread across nine permanent galleries built from a high school's donated paintings, a WPA-funded building, and a hundred years of shuffled deeds.
The Spanish Colonial Revival building still stands at 400 South, its WPA tilework and oak doors unchanged since 1937.
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