Caching in on the Arts in Northern Utah

2. Summer Noon Music Series

89 S. 200 West, Logan

On any given weekday at noon between Memorial Day and the end of July, visitors can step inside The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chapel across the street from Logan High School and hear music. Concerts might range from an organ or cello recital to polka music to a solo show by Dan Truman (of Diamond Rio and Nashville Tribute fame) to a lecture demonstration on instruments from around the world.

Carol Foht, who runs the free series, explains that it grew out of an interfaith service in the aftermath of 9/11, presented by Cache Community Connections as a way to “bring the community together and make people feel better.” Now she counts 10,000 total visitors over the 10-week run and expects that number to rise with an anticipated return to the series’ original home, the newly renovated Logan Tabernacle, in summer 2025.

Logan’s “summer citizens” — 90 percent of them from Arizona, Foht estimates — make up the bulk of the audience, “but I’m hoping to get the [local] community more aware.” Perhaps the series’ four evening performances on an outdoor plaza on Main Street, scheduled just before curtain time at the nearby theaters, will help in that awareness effort.

Foht joined the Summer Noon organizing committee shortly before 2020 and took over as chairperson in 2021. Asked about her musical background, she quips, “I can play Alexa.” She says she is continually amazed at the caliber of performers in the community and regrets that the series can’t accept everyone who applies.

3. Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art

650 N. 1100 East (on the Utah State University campus), Logan

It might seem surprising for the director of an art museum to point out that the facility is not a fine art museum. But Katie Lee-Koven, executive director and chief curator of the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art since 2014, finds it worth noting because she prefers not to “place a hierarchy around media.” 

Ceramics was the passion of the museum’s benefactor and namesake, Lee-Koven explains — and believe it or not, ceramics isn’t considered “fine art.” There is something for everyone at NEHMA. “Our audience is broad,” Lee-Koven says. “The last thing we want is for people to feel unwelcome.” Outreach includes monthly community art days, with an art truck hitting the town’s farmers market in warmer months — and schools around the state at other times. Beginning in summer 2024, the Wanlass Center for Art Education and Research on the museum’s south side will open even more educational opportunities to scholars, students and the community.

NEHMA offers a major exhibition (such as “Unearthed: The NEHMA Ceramics Collection & The Woman Behind It” in 2024) each academic year. If you can’t make it to the USU campus, virtual tours of many current and past exhibitions are available.

Other exhibits, which Lee-Koven strives to make as diverse as possible, are installed on a semester basis — shows like “Artepaño,” cotton kerchiefs transformed into works of art by self-taught artists in the penal system; and works of “Hard-Edge” abstractionist June Harwood.

A wide selection of artwork from the permanent collection is also on display — don’t miss “Klompen,” a kinetic sculpture that transforms nearly 100 wooden clogs into musical instruments.