City Weekly Best of Utah 2017

Best of Utah 2017: Arts & Culture

26 reader-voted winners in arts & culture, from the City Weekly Best of Utah 2017 poll.

Ask Ave: What won Best of Utah 2017 for Arts & Culture

• Best Accessible Rock ArtNine Mile Canyon
• Best AfterpartySalad Event Series

  As all party people of Utah—especially newcomers—are aware of, the bars just close too damn early here. That might lend a hand to the ever-growing local EDM community, which you can always…

• Best coin-operated muralLiberty Coin Laundry

  Nah, you can view this beauty for free. The angelic washers with wings painted dumping (presumably) clean clothes over a pristine landscape on the side of Liberty Coin Laundry makes going…

• Best cross-cultural ExhibitionUtah Museum of Contemporary Art's Cities of Conviction

  It's easy for rhetoric to make "others" seem like something completely unknowable; part of the joy of art is the way it can show us how much more alike we are than we ever realized. Curator…

• Best Dance ClubArea 51
• Best Dance CompanyBallet West
• Best Friend of the ArtsGeorge S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation
• Best GalleryUrban Arts Gallery
• Best generic hipster muralVexta's "The Nature of Wisdom"

  Salt Lake City is in the middle of a historic conservation identity crisis. For every Classic Bowling pin preservation, there are several wrecking balls salivating over the next Granite…

• Best Inclusive Dance PartyVibe Events

  Hey, deaf people like to party, too. But unfortunately Utah's nightlife scene hasn't been so accommodating. That's something Maclain Drake is changing with his new series of inclusive EDM…

• Best incredible edible spun sugar sculptureLollipuff Cotton Candy Co.

  This ain't your typical pre-packaged toothache inducing ball o' gluey glucose only available in faux flavored "pink" or "blue." In the hands of talented sweets superhero Allison Andersen of…

• Best literary treasure troveCentral Book Exchange Parking Lot Sale

  While perusing Central Book Exchange is always a book scavenger's delight, their annual Parking Lot Sale has many of us word nerds squealing with glee. For one weekend each summer, the big…

• Best Movie TheaterBroadway Centre Theatre
• Best movie theater to escape a lazy Sunday's summer heatBroadway Centre Theatre

  Here's a movie idea: guy wakes up among his empties and then heads downtown only to duck away from the muggy Sunday morning at a cool $6.75 matinee. Plot twist: It's autobiographical. So…

• Best MuseumNatural History Museum of Utah
• Best outside-the-box listening partyWinter Grain at Clark Planetarium

  You've experienced Laser Floyd. And Laser Zeppelin. And Laser U2. Now comes the next evolution of the every stoner's favorite midnight planetarium attraction. Ladies and gentledudes, please…

• Best PodcastGeek Show Podcast
• Best puppet performanceRiley O'Toole, Salt Lake Acting Co.'s Hand to God

  Acting is inherently a challenge; taking on the job performing multiple characters in the same play, even more so. Then there's the weird case of Riley O'Toole in Salt Lake Acting Co.'s…

• Best radio censuring deviceDoug Fabrizio's bleep button

  If you turned on the radio midway through a rebroadcast RadioWest episode in May, you might have thought by the amount of bleeped "f*ck"s and "sh*t"s coming from host Doug Fabrizio's mouth…

• Best Sundance replacementOgden Film Festival

  When the Sundance Film Festival opted not to return to Peery's Egyptian Theater as a venue for 2017, the city of Ogden and its film buffs could have wallowed in their disappointment…

• Best Tattoo ArtistAustin Jones at Painted Temple
• Best Theater CompanySalt Lake Acting Co.
• Best TV AnchorShauna Lake
• Best TV News ReporterBen Winslow
• Best Utah literary leading ladyLogan Poet Laureate Star Coulbrooke

  If there's anyone who could be the face of the grassroots literary culture in Utah, it's Star Coulbrooke. Having been one of the chief editors of the recently published Helicon West…

• Best Visual ArtistCat Palmer