Cacophonies are common on Main Street. At least they used to be before a pandemic upended society. Still, the Kimball Arts Festival feels different. A succession of tents stretches to Old Town, packed with creative renderings ranging from the sublime to the strange. The sound from live music stages with their accompanying beer gardens rises above the murmuring din of a roiling sea of art admirers. After taking a hiatus in 2020, the Kimball Arts Festival is returning to Park City this summer from Aug. 6–8.
The event is a beautiful distillation of what can happen when the town’s disparate personalities all get together to mingle. The festival’s welcome return will draw visiting aficionados, second homeowners, lifties on summer break and everyone in between to share in the spirit brought by more than 200 artists from around the world. One of Park City’s more egalitarian occasions lets us pick up an impressionist sculpture or a mountain scape oil painting worth thousands and scour the stalls for bargain-priced reprints.
The return of the Kimball’s signature event, and single biggest fundraiser, isn’t the only noteworthy news to come from Kimball this year. Doors opened this spring at the new home of the Kimball Art Center at the YARD on Kearns Blvd. The 9,000-square-foot reimagined warehouse features four gallery spaces, four event spaces and an event café space. For the past five years, the Art Center’s home has been in a temporary location on Kearns after spending nearly four decades in the iconic Ely Garage on the corner of Heber Ave. and Park Ave.
The latest location is yet another temporary home on the way to the Kimball Art Center’s ultimate destination within the upcoming and still-being-planned Arts and Culture District. With an ambiguous timeline for completion, staff envisions the Kimball’s location at the YARD an important step towards developing the permanent epicenter for art in Park City.
Who Are the Artists?
The roughly 200 artists, representing 13 visual arts disciplines, at the Kimball Arts Festival are chosen through a blind jury selection process from more than 1,000 entrants. Artists accepted to last year’s Virtual Arts Festival were given the option to defer to this year’s in-person event.
1251 Kearns Blvd., 435-649-8882
Find full event details and information about upcoming exhibitions and events on Kimball’s website. Read more on the latest in arts and entertainment in Utah.
