The Chase Home Museum of Utah Folk Arts is operated by the Utah Division of Arts & Museums, and has been the permanent home of the Utah State Folk Arts Collection since 1987 and is the only museum in the United States that is dedicated to displaying a state-owned collection of contemporary folk art produced by its residents. It is a venue for Utah's diverse artists and communities to share their folk art including:

craft A craft or trade is a pastime or an occupation that requires particular skills and knowledge of skilled work. In a historical sense, particularly the Middle Ages and earlier, the term is usually applied to people occupied in small scale pr ...

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

, and

dance Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

. In addition to rotating

exhibits An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within a cultural or educational setting such as a museum, art gallery, park, library, exhibition ...

, annual

concerts A concert, often known informally as a gig or show, is a live performance of music in front of an audience. The performance may be carried by a single musician, in which case it is sometimes called a recital, or by a musical ensemble such as an ...

, and hands-on workshops, the Chase Home Museum houses an

archive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials, in any medium, or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organ ...

of fieldwork recordings and photographs that document Utah's

folk art Folk art covers all forms of visual art made in the context of folk culture. Definitions vary, but generally the objects have practical utility of some kind, rather than being exclusively decorative art, decorative. The makers of folk art a ...

and traditional

culture Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...

. The Chase Home Museum currently has three permanent exhibition galleries and one temporary exhibition gallery.

History

In 1847, Isaac Chase emigrated to Utah with

Mormon pioneers The Mormon pioneers were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), also known as Latter-day Saints, who Human migration, migrated beginning in the mid-1840s until the late-1860s across the United States from the ...

and quickly continued his vocation by building a sawmill and

gristmill A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and Wheat middlings, middlings. The term can refer to either the grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist is grain that h ...

on the outskirts of the newly formed settlement of

Salt Lake City, Utah Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. It is the county seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Salt ...

. In the early 1850s,

Mormon Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into several ...

leader

Brigham Young Brigham Young ( ; June 1, 1801August 29, 1877) was an American religious leader and politician. He was the second President of the Church (LDS Church), president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from 1847 until h ...

partnered with Isaac Chase in his milling business as it prospered. At the same time, Isaac Chase built a two-story adobe house near the mills in the center of a farm. The Chase Home is a traditional two-story central-passage floor plan made of

adobe Adobe (from arabic: الطوب Attub ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for mudbrick. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is use ...

bricks that were manufactured behind the home. Several changes have been made to the home over the years, most notably the additional of a rear cross-wing that functioned as a kitchen and a two-story portico to the front facade that emphasized the

Greek Revival Greek Revival architecture is a architectural style, style that began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe, the United States, and Canada, ...

style of the building. The Chase Home was known as a gathering place for pioneers, leaders of

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Restorationism, restorationist Christianity, Christian Christian denomination, denomination and the ...

, and young people in search of entertainment.Sanders, William. 1998. Isaac Chase Utah Pioneer, 1847. In 1882 that farm was gifted to the State of Utah and became known as

Liberty Park Liberty Park is a elevated public park at the World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York City, overlooking the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in Lower Manhattan. The park, which opened on June 29, 2016, is located above the World Trade ...

Folk Art Collection

The Chase Home Museum of Utah Folk Arts is the only museum in the United States that is dedicated to displaying a state-owned collection of contemporary folk art produced by Utah residents. A large portion of the collection comes from Utah's Native American population who used wood,

willow Willows, also called sallows and osiers, of the genus ''Salix'', comprise around 350 species (plus numerous hybrids) of typically deciduous trees and shrubs, found primarily on moist soils in cold and temperate regions. Most species are known ...

, buckskin, beads, porcupine quills, shells and sequins to make things like baskets,

cradleboard Cradleboards (, , , , , Kazakh: ''бесік'', Kyrgyz: ''бешік'') are traditional protective baby-carriers used by many indigenous cultures in North America, throughout northern Scandinavia among the Sámi, and in the traditionally noma ...

s, clothing, jewelry,

kachina A kachina (; Hopi language, Hopi: ''katsina'' , plural ''katsinim'' ) is a spirit being in the religious beliefs of the Pueblo people, Native Americans in the United States, Native American cultures located in the south-western part of the Unite ...

dolls, drums and flutes. Utah's American Indian population includes those affiliated with land-based resident tribes—the linguistically related

Goshute The Goshutes are a tribe of Western Shoshone Native Americans. There are two federally recognized Goshute tribes today: * Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, located in Nevada and Utah * Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians of ...

, Northern

Ute Ute or UTE may refer to: * Ute people, a Native American people of the Great Basin * Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, Utah * Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah * Southern Ute Indian Tribe of the Southern ...

Paiute Paiute (; also Piute) refers to three non-contiguous groups of Indigenous peoples of the Great Basin. Although their languages are related within the Numic group of Uto-Aztecan languages, these three languages do not form a single subgroup and th ...

Shoshone The Shoshone or Shoshoni ( or ), also known by the endonym Newe, are an Native Americans in the United States, Indigenous people of the United States with four large cultural/linguistic divisions: * Eastern Shoshone: Wyoming * Northern Shoshon ...

, Ute Mountain Ute and the

Athabaskan Athabaskan ( ; also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large branch of the Na-Dene language family of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, ...

-speaking

Navajos The Navajo or Diné are an Indigenous people of the Southwestern United States. Their traditional language is Diné bizaad, a Southern Athabascan language. The states with the largest Diné populations are Arizona (140,263) and New Mexico (10 ...

—and those from other tribal groups who have chosen Utah as their home. The collection also includes many items created by people who came to Utah through

immigration Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as Permanent residency, permanent residents. Commuting, Commuter ...

and

refugee A refugee, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is a person "forced to flee their own country and seek safety in another country. They are unable to return to their own country because of feared persecution as ...

programs. Although many traditional arts are modified or lost when people migrate from one society to the other, the most meaningful and symbolic folk art often persists. Folk arts focused on religious belief, identity, and community celebration are the most common. The folk art collection at the Chase Home Museum includes wood carvings, pottery, jewelry, baskets, textiles, and sculptures with roots in European, Asian,

Hispanic The term Hispanic () are people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or broadly. In some contexts, Hispanic and Latino Americans, especially within the United States, "Hispanic" is used as an Ethnici ...

, Polynesian, and African cultures. Other contemporary folk art in the collection at the Chase Home Museum include occupational folk art. Occupational folk art refers to items that are created for functional use in one's occupation, but often also reflect the aesthetics of the creator. Sometimes these items are created as decorative pieces to commemorate their occupational heritage and celebrate the skills that created them. Examples of occupational folk art in the collection include:

stone carving Stone carving is an activity where pieces of rough natural stone are shaped by the controlled removal of stone. Owing to the permanence of the material, stone work has survived which was created during our prehistory or past time. Work carried ...

blacksmith A blacksmith is a metalsmith who creates objects primarily from wrought iron or steel, but sometimes from #Other metals, other metals, by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut (cf. tinsmith). Blacksmiths produce objects such ...

ing, saddle making, horsehair hitching, and

woodworking Woodworking is the skill of making items from wood, and includes cabinetry, furniture making, wood carving, joinery, carpentry, and woodturning. History Along with stone, clay and animal parts, wood was one of the first materials worked b ...

Location

, located in

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. It is the county seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in the state. The city is the core of the Salt Lake Ci ...

between 900 South and 1300 South and 500 East and 700 East, is the second largest park in

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

. The Chase Home Museum of Utah Folk Arts is located just west of the park's center.

References

External links

Chase Home Museum of Utah Folk Arts
- Official website {{authority control Folk art museums and galleries in Utah Museums in Salt Lake City Native American museums in Utah Arts centers in Utah Art museums and galleries established in 1987 1987 establishments in Utah

History

Folk Art Collection

Location

See also

References

External links