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By Deborah Carl
Unknown Teichert Painting Discovered in Utah High School
RICHFIELD, UTAH -- Everyone dreams of a great find when they dig through
their attics and basements and that is what the director of the Springville
Museum of Art found in a dirty, folded canvas in the Richfield High School
safe. Vern Swanson and associate museum director, Sharon Gray, traveled to
more than 100 Utah public schools to inventory art works as part of the
museum's statewide Art Partnership Project. On August 24 they discovered
"the art find of the decade." The dirty canvas was an oil painting by
Utah-born artist Minerva Teichert depicting an American Indian on horseback
about to slay a bison.
No one is sure where the picture came from. The canvas was under the stage
in the old school and the drama teacher, Elaine Street, said she found the
picture about three years ago under the stage in the new school while she
was looking for props. "It was behind some boxes of [furnace] filters under
the stage which had never been touched in the 16 years I'd been teaching
here," she said. "I almost tossed it out." A year later she removed it from
its broken frame, folded it and placed it in the vault for safe keeping.
Swanson said the 60-inch-by-76 inch painting will be worth $50,000 once is
undergoes emergency restoration and gets a new frame. Once the picture is
finished, it will be returned to the school.
Minerva Teichert's best-known works include covers on Latter-day Saint
publications, more than 40 paintings based on the Book of Mormon which hang
at Brigham Young University, and a mural in the World Room of the Manti
Temple. The Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City owns several
of her larger pieces and there are others in the Springville Museum of Art.
Source:
Museum's Statewide Quest Nets 'Art Find of Decade' in Richfield
Salt Lake Tribune 25Aug01 A2
By Mark Havnes and Hal Edwards: Salt Lake Tribune
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