Utah Museum of Fine Arts

The Utah Museum of Fine Arts is the state’s art museum, housed in the Marcia and John Price Museum Building on the University of Utah campus in Salt Lake City. Its permanent collection spans many centuries and world regions, and the museum pairs those long standing holdings with temporary exhibitions that rotate throughout the year, so the galleries do not look quite the same from one visit to the next. A museum store and a cafe sit alongside the galleries, and guided tours are offered for visitors who want more context as they move through the building.

Plan for at least an hour if you are moving quickly through a few galleries, and closer to two or three if you want to see the full collection alongside whatever temporary exhibition is on view. The building suits a range of visitors: families looking for an indoor activity on a hot Salt Lake City afternoon or a snowy winter day, a solo visitor filling an hour between campus errands, and first time visitors to the city who want an introduction to the region’s art scene without leaving the University of Utah campus. Because the galleries are indoors, the museum works well as a rainy day, a very hot afternoon, or a cold winter option.

Getting to the museum by car means using Campus Center Drive on the University of Utah campus, between Rice-Eccles Stadium and the Jon M. Huntsman Center. Free visitor parking is available in the stalls signed as UMFA Visitor Parking in the lot east of the museum, though visitors need to register their license plate at the welcome desk to avoid a citation. When that lot fills, a pay lot with mobile pay sits just north on Campus Center Drive. Parking on campus is generally free on weekends outside reserved stalls, but Saturdays during football season can fill quickly, so public transit is worth considering on game days. For visitors coming by TRAX, the museum is about a five minute walk from the University South Campus stop on the Red Line, and several UTA bus routes also serve the campus.

General admission is charged, though the museum offers several ways to visit for free: the first Wednesday and third Saturday of every month are free for all visitors, and University of Utah students, faculty, and staff always get in free with a valid ID. The museum is closed on Mondays, and hours run later into the evening on Wednesdays, a useful window for an after work visit. The building is ADA accessible, with elevators, a complimentary wheelchair at the welcome desk, and accessible restrooms and seating throughout. Additional accommodations include assistive listening devices, sign language interpretation on request, an audio guide with transcripts, guided touch tours of selected works by appointment, and sensory bags with headphones and fidget tools for visitors who need them.

The museum sits within a broader cluster of University of Utah cultural destinations, alongside the Natural History Museum of Utah and Red Butte Garden elsewhere on campus, so a single trip to this part of Salt Lake City can cover more than one stop. Visitors who want a fuller day out can pair a few hours in the galleries with time at the garden or the natural history collections, all part of the same general stretch of campus north and east of the main university core.