January 24, 2025

Just after World War II, the Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City, Utah, opened as a federally funded residential boarding school for children from the Navajo Nation. Expanding its services in 1974, it admitted youth from any Native American tribe and as many as one hundred Native Nations were represented adding “Intertribal” to its name. In an effort to show pride and community, Native American youth who attended the school have gathered over the decades to repaint the symbolic “I”… (for “Intermountain”) on the side of the mountain overlooking the former campus and Brigham City, Utah both during and since the facility’s closure in 1984. Intermountain was one of the 523 Native American boarding schools that dotted the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Nationally renowned Chiricahua Apache artist Allan Houser taught art at Intermountain for almost a decade. Houser and some other faculty and staff at Intermountain embraced the arts and encouraged students’ creative self-expression. Art with Indigenous themes was prominently displayed across campus, adorning hallways and dorm rooms. These vibrant artworks were not the product of professional artists but the students themselves. Given paint and permission from their teachers, these young individuals created images that connected them with home and their culture. Through their creativity and perseverance, students found ways to assert their cultural heritage and navigate the constraints of an educational system that encouraged blending in. This forward out-of-the box thinking and instruction was the same intellectual process that Dr. John Biggers was encouraging at Texas State University in Houston, Texas.

In 2013, when Utah State University purchased the land on which the former school sat, these murals were found in a garage. Someone in the community had removed and saved a small selection of the artworks before the buildings were torn down. The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art has worked with Intermountain alumni, scholars, and tribal leaders to preserve these works of art.

Through a careful search for a mural restoration expert, Scott M. Haskins, Art Conservator with extensive experience working in Utah for almost 50 years, reassured to provide the best quality work and the highest quality services needed for this big project.

See this short video of their restoration treatments:

Following their mural conservation treatments over the last four years, the eleven murals featured in the exhibition that once adorned the walls of the Intermountain Indian School, are proudly put on permanent display at the Intermountain Inter-tribal Native American Cultural Center. This is the first time these restored murals are available for the public to view.

The recovery, preservation, restoration and preparation for exhibition of the 11 mural sections were undertaken by Fine Art Conservation Laboratories (aka FACL, Inc.) and Scott M. Haskins, Head of Conservation in Santa Barbara, CA. FACL also consulted and collaborated with Prince Gallery Inc. in North Logan, Utah and Frank Prince on the display and framing of the 11 sections.

The art conservation of the murals was made possible with support from:
The Terra Foundation for American Art
Marriner S. Eccles Foundation
National Endowment for the Humanities
Utah State University
Lubetkin Family Foundation
Utah Division of Arts and Museums

As well as the following individuals:
Daniel Diem and Kent Bracken, David Lancey and Joyce Kinkead, Chuck and Louise Gay, Carl and Mary-Ann Muffoletto, Noel and Patricia Holmgren, Terry and David Peak, Jessica Schad, Ann Berghout-Austin and Dennis Austin, Evelyn Funda, Cree Taylor, Kirsten Vinyeta, Kerry Jordan and Jon Brunn, Jody and Dione Burnett

Programming support is provided by:
Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, Brigham Young University
Cache County RAPZ and Restaurant Tax Program

Intermountain Mural Advisory Committee 
This committee was formed in early 2021 to advise NEHMA on the art restoration and exhibition of the murals.

• Information used by permission by The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum

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Utah State University, Nora Eccles Art Museum, USU, Native American Art, Intertribal Art, Art Conservation, Mural Conservation, mural restoration, Fine Art Conservation Laboratories, Scott M. Haskins, Virginia Panizzon