BOUNTIFUL – The Bountiful/Davis Art Center start the new year in a new home.
The art center will move into an upstairs portion of the old county courthouse next Monday and Tuesday, a space they’ll occupy for up to the next two years. BDAC staff and a crew of volunteers will spend January getting the new space set up, and they plan to start classes and their first exhibit in February.
“It will take us a few weeks to get settled and ready,” said BDAC Executive Director Emma Dugal. “We have lots of volunteers who are mobilizing to help us out.”
That list of volunteers includes the Bountiful Lion’s Club, which will help paint the new space, and teens from the Genesis Youth Center. They and others will have to set up offices, move art, and set up gallery lights.
Once the move is completed, the art center will hold a fire sale on Jan. 11 and 12 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. According to Dugal, anything that staff or volunteers don’t move out of the old building will be for sale.
“The prices will be really low,” she said. “A desk might cost $5.”
The Bountiful/Davis Art Center and the Joy Foundation are being relocated due to the planned demolition of their Bountiful building. The building is being torn down to make way for the new city hall, which may start construction as early as next spring. Once that is completed, the current city hall building will be remodeled into a home for both the BDAC and a south Davis-focused museum.
Until then, the BDAC will make its home in Farmington. Dugal expects the art center will keep the same opening and closing hours. If not, the adjustments would be minimal.
The new space will include art in both a conference room and all along a T-shaped hallway, and will first be used for the Statewide Art Show and Competition on Feb. 22.
“With the hallway, we have just about the same amount of linear feet as we did in the old building,” said Dugal. “I don’t think the move will affect the exhibits much at all.”
Other areas have faced different tradeoffs. Though they’ll have more office space in their new home, there are fewer areas for the BDAC staff to hold art classes. Despite that, they’re finding ways to adapt.
“We’re setting up the schedule so we don’t have as many classes overlap,” she said. “It’s a trade-off, but we’ll manage.”
Though the space is only temporary, Dugal said she hopes to use the move as a way to help the art center keep growing.
“We want to continue the momentum we have now,” she said. “We want to gain more friends and visibility in the northern part of the county, and we hope that the people who visited us in Bountiful will come see us in Farmington.”
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