Karl Benjamin, American, 1925–2012, Interlocking Forms (Yellow, Orange, Black), 1959, oil on canvas, 42.75 x 48.75 x 1.75 inches, Gift of the Marie Eccles Caine Foundation. Collection of the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University.
When the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art opened its doors in 1982, its galleries were nearly empty.
The earliest exhibitions at the Logan museum included the expected — Western landscapes, Navajo blankets and cowboy and Native American illustrations. But George Wanlass — the great-nephew of museum founder Nora Eccles Harrison — knew the space needed something more.
“We had a museum,” Wanlass said, “that was mostly just devoid of any contents that suited the magnificence of its setting.”
So he started collecting on its behalf, combining his own love of the West with what he learned as a teen touring museums in Europe with his Eccles relatives — and developing a unique eye for innovative and abstract pieces by artists whose significance had yet to be recognized.
(George Wanlass) George Wanlass, great-nephew of the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art’s founder, has collected more than 1,000 works to the museum’s collection.
Pursuing artworks as he ran a dairy farm in Cache Valley and later, a cattle ranch in Idaho, Wanlass acquired more than 1,000 works of NEHMA’s nearly 6,000-piece collection. Today, the museum prides itself on highlighting artists who have “fallen through the cracks of history.”
With the recent opening of his namesake Wanlass Center for Art Education and Research at the museum, The Salt Lake Tribune asked Wanlass to name 10 of his favorite acquisitions.
Now in his 80s and living in Big Timber, Montana, he picked 11 — each key to the collection that today anchors NEHMA and helped redefine what art from the American West could be.
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Wanlass first heard about this piece by Karl Benjamin from art dealer Tobey Moss, who called to tell him it was for sale through another gallery. Wanlass said Moss believed the museum should have it, and he trusted her judgment after he saw the painting.
Today, Benjamin — who lived for more than 50 years in a suburban home east of Los Angeles — is remembered as one of the most expansively intuitive artists of geometric abstraction, Wanlass said.
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‘This artistic legacy’
Wanlass said he always understood that his efforts were about more than just filling gallery space — they were about creating a collection that would expose communities to the rich, often overlooked artistic history of their own region.
“When we think about the American West, I think of the cowboy movies I watched assiduously when I was growing up,” Wanlass said. “But that’s not what the West is about. It’s been filled, over many years, by these important artists, people that were interested in their own creative processes.”
“We live in one of the most beautiful parts of the world, and we’re fortunate that way. But we also are fortunate because we have this artistic legacy, and it’s as wonderful in its own way as the mountains and the landscapes that surround us.”
“We all should know these artists, especially if we live in the American West.”
The new Wanlass Center
The Wanlass Center for Art Education and Research is a $7.6 million expansion of the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art in Logan.
It opened in April, doubling the museum’s storage space and providing new areas for classes, researchers and the public to study its collections.
The center is named for George Wanlass, who acquired more than 1,000 artworks for the museum. He is the great-nephew of its founder, Nora Eccles Harrison, and the grandson of her sister, Marie Eccles Caine. Both women were daughters of wealthy Utah business owner and industrialist David Eccles.
Foundations named for both women and for George’s mother, Kathryn Caine Wanlass, have contributed support and art to the museum, which is an independent unit of Utah State University.