A Century of Sanctuary The Art of Zion National Park

For the past 130 years, gifted artists, from Thomas Moran to Jim Jones and Roland Lee, from Maynard Dixon to Lynn Berryhill and Kate Starling, have translated onto canvas and paper the wonder, the mystery, and the unutterable beauty of Zion Canyon. Their work has preserved their most intimate impressions of the canyon for the rest of us to experience again and again. Commemorating Zion National Park's 2009 Centennial, an amazing assemblage of timeless works was gathered into one exhibit at the St. George Art Museum and is now preserved forever. On these pages are found many of the finest works of Zion Canyon art ever created, from the historic to the contemporary.
Maynard Dixon once said his mind was "set to tell the truth of it" on paper and on canvas. There are many ways to get at the truth, and each artist represented here has found it through his or her own means. The truth of Zion Canyon is revealed to each of us the first time we raise our eyes to its pinnacles. We can experience it for the first time only once, but through the wonderful works of art reproduced in this book, it is our fortune to be able to view an array of beautifully varied interpretations of Zion whenever we wish. Through the transforming power of art, our souls can be sparked and our hearts renewed with the wonder we felt that first time. The truth revealed in these paintings allows us to see Zion anew, again...and again.

Lyman Hafen comes from the fifth generation of a Mormon family that settled along the Virgin and Santa Clara rivers in the early 1860s. Growing up on the edge of St. George, he witnessed firsthand the transformation of his boyhood village into a bustling city.

A graduate of Brigham Young University, Hafen began his writing career in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Like many others of his generation, Hafen could not shake the red sand of Southern Utah from his shoes. He returned with his young family to St. George in 1983 where he became founding editor of St. George Magazine, and began teaching writing classes at Dixie College. He is currently the Executive Director of the Zion Natural History Association and past president of the Association of Partners for Public Lands.

Over the past 10 years, Hafen's fiction and nonfiction have received seven awards from the Utah Arts Council. He's written for a number of regional and national magazines, among them Travel-Holiday, Nevada Magazine and Arizona Highways, and has published over six books.

Peter H. Hassrick is a leading scholar in the field of Western American art. He was the Founding Director Emeritus of the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma. He was also the founding director of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. For 20 years prior to that, Hassrick served as the director of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody.

He has written extensively on a variety of Western American artists, including Alfred Jacob Miller, George Catlin, William Ranney, Charles Russell, Frederic Remington, Alexander Phimister Proctor, Solon Borglum and Georgia O'Keeffe. He is the reigning national authority on Frederic Remington and a member of the Charles Russell catalogue raisonné team. Hassrick was born in Philadelphia and raised in Denver. He earned a B.A. in History from the University of Colorado and an M.A. in Art History from the University of Denver, with a concentration in 19th-century and early 20th-century American art.

Currently, he serves as Director for the Institute of Western American Art (IWAA).

Deborah Reeder is currently the curator of the St.George Art Museum in St. George, Utah. She received her BA from the U. of Washington, Seattle; MA & PH.D. coursework U. of Chicago-Art Historian. She is an admired and respected contributor to the appreciation of Arts in the Southern Utah area.

Robert Redford is an American actor, director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, and philanthropist. Redford is the founder of the Sundance Film Festival. Redford has longtime ties to Utah including movies filmed in and around Zion National Park. He is a great supporter of the arts and environmental issues in the region.