Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Museum Project topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Museum of Utah slated to open May 2026; new Capitol space will house collections, conservation and digitization labs
Summary
State cultural project manager David Wachey says fabrication for the Museum of Utah will begin in spring 2025 and the facility at the Capitol is scheduled to open in May 2026 with roughly 17,000—,000—,000—,000—,000—,000 square feet of exhibit space, new collections storage and a digitization lab to protect artifacts moved after the 2020 Rio Grande earthquake.
David Wachey, Director of Strategic Initiatives and Collaboration and project manager for the Museum of Utah, said fabrication for the museum's exhibits is expected to start in spring 2025 and that the facility is slated to open in May 2026.
Wachey said the Museum of Utah will be located at the Capitol within the Utah Historical Society and will include roughly "an 18,000, 17 thousand, 18 thousand square foot exhibit space on the First Floor." He framed the project as primarily about protecting and preserving state collections: "One of the biggest reasons this building is happening is to protect our historic art and artifact collections." He added that collections previously stored in the Rio Grande basement after the 2020 earthquake "have been moved out" and are currently in a safe space pending installation in new, climate-controlled storage in the museum's garden level.
Why it matters: the museum consolidates exhibition space, conservation and public access under one project. Wachey said the new facility will include a conservation space and a digitization lab intended to preserve photographs, records and artifacts and make them available for public access.
Details and staffing: Wachey named the first hires already in place, saying the museum has filled roles including an exhibits program manager (Holly Andrew), a museum director and a director of collections, and that it will recruit additional positions such as a visitor services manager and a director of museum technology. He described an extended exhibit development and review process, including a multi-year interpretive planning phase that began about 2017 and an exhaustive content audit of artifacts, images and text to ensure broad geographic and cultural representation.
On acquisitions and donations, Wachey described a formal provenance and acquisitions review: potential donations or loans must be documented with provenance and evaluated against the museum's collecting policy, mission fit and the institution's capacity to conserve and present the item.
Next steps: fabrication and exhibit construction, hiring to build visitor-facing operations, and installation of new collections storage and digitization infrastructure ahead of the projected May 2026 opening.
"We're going to start building all the exhibits that we've actually been looking at on paper for 3 or 4 years now," Wachey said, noting the team's focus on both preservation and public storytelling.
