Salt Lake Theater

This is part of a collection of murals created by Van Frank for Auerbach’s Department Store. The murals were displayed in their downtown Salt Lake retail space in celebration of Utah’s 1947 centennial of LDS Church migration into the Salt Lake Valley. This piece depicts an audience enjoying a performance of “Swan Lake” at the Salt Lake Theatre circa 1890.

Here’s more about the work and the artist from Megan Van Frank:

“E. Merrill Van Frank was my father’s mother. My grandmother was an amazing woman who defied expectations in the early 1920s by going to New York to follow her dream of becoming a working artist. It was the start of a long career; she was a fashion illustrator, fashion manager for two of Utah’s biggest department stores (Auerbach’s and ZCMI), an interior designer, art teacher, and a serious painter. The Centennial Murals that mark a state milestone also represent some complex layers of place-making and social history. Our family has always considered them to be a real Utah treasure and are pleased they’ve found a proper home in the state’s public collection.

The Salt Lake Theatre work you’ve chosen to highlight has, at its center, a woman in green modeled on Nancy Finch (my grandmother’s best friend), who was a patron of the arts in Utah, serving on the boards of the symphony and other organizations. The Finch Lane Gallery, and Finch Lane on which it sits in Reservoir Park, are named for her father, who served on the Salt Lake City Council and advocated for the park.”

Edna Merril Van Frank, of Logan, New York City, and Salt Lake City, graduated from the Utah Agricultural College, which is now known as Utah State University. She was unhappy with the level of education and training that was available to her there so she, along with two female friends, enrolled at Columbia University in New York City. At Columbia she was able to develop her artistic studies in a more open environment. 

She went on to work for Bergdorf-Goodman in Manhattan as an artist and then worked as a freelance fashion illustrator for firms in New York after she was married. Eventually, she and her husband moved to Utah after her two children had grown up. Her art had strong Western themes, with a focus on Utah history. 

In Utah she worked as an artist for Auerbach’s department store in Salt Lake City for five years and had painted several murals to commemorate the Utah Centennial of 1947 on display at the Pioneer Craft House in December 1959. She went on to work for ZCMI department store in Salt Lake City where she executed more murals for the store. The department store exhibited and sold several of her works and she worked for them as an interior designer. At the end of her life she still acted in association with the Pioneer Craft House as a teacher and exhibitor and pursued painting. An oil painter and watercolorist, Van Frank painted not only murals but easel works featuring landscape and genre subjects.

All Aboard! Exhibition (2019), Springville Museum of Art