The USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum are happy to be able to extend their current art exhibit, add new operating hours, and establish a visitor information center. Dr. Tim Riley stopped by Castle Country Radio to talk about all the details.
Currently an exhibit called Chasing Time: The Story of Eastern Utah’s Geology through the Paintings of Terry Willis is being extended, so you now have more time to go see the show. “So we decided to work with Terry Willis who is a beautiful telephoto realistic landscape painter to use her art to talk about the science behind it. Specifically, the geology of the rocks that are pictured here, there’s four main areas that are focused on, one is the Bryce Canyon area, one if the Moab area, one is the Green River area, and the other area is part of the San Rafael Swell, so all basically right around here. Her beautiful paintings of these landscapes in four quadrans, and then we got a flint down on the bottom with the formations, and figure painting of hers showing you what the rock formation are,” explained Dr. Riley. The museum has decided to extend it through their early tourist season, as well as, through their school tour season as they can use it for an educational tool.
At this time the museum has made changes to their operating hours to better accommodate those visitors who can only visit during the evenings. “This February we’re expanding our hours. We started this as a trial run last summer, we started staying open till 7:00 pm on Thursdays, in conjunction with the Peace Gardens Culture Connection that Price City puts on, they’re wonderful concert series. We’ve decided to extend that even further, we’re actually going to be open till 7:00 pm, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and then we’ve added the one day of the week that we weren’t open was Sunday and we’ve now added that,” said Dr. Riley. Now with the new hours the museum will only be closed five days a year which is Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s day.
A collaboration between Price City, Carbon County Tourism Office and USU are establishing together a Visitor Information Center inside the museum. “The final renderings and plans are all approved and in place. The electrical, the internet has been wired up and is ready to go so it’s just going to be a little bit of time to get the panel fabricated and installed on the walls then there will be a visitors’ center. It will be self-served during most of the week and then on Friday evenings through Saturday and Sunday there will actually be a visitor staff member there to answer your questions,” said Dr. Riley. The museum is looking to have the Visitor Information Center up and running by the time tourist season hits in June.
To learn more about the USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum can visit their website at https://eastern.usu.edu/museum/