One of Utah’s largest local art collections is in a place you wouldn’t expect

For a bank executive, Scott Anderson knows a lot about art.

Specifically, Anderson — who retired at the end of March as the longtime president and CEO of Utah’s Zions Bank — knows a lot about the works in the bank’s art collection, which number in the thousands.

Take, for example, “The Seagulls,” a work by Vernal artist Valoy Eaton. Zions, for its 125th anniversary, commissioned 12 original paintings, focusing on pioneers first entering what is now Utah. Eaton’s painting depicted pioneers in a field with gulls, the state bird.

Anderson said that the bank’s art consultant, the gallerist Werner Weixler, thought there were too many seagulls in the painting — and took a few off when Eaton first presented it to the bank.

It was also Weixler, Anderson said, who suggested the bank hang landscape paintings in its downtown Salt Lake City branch near the company’s headquarters — because some of the offices on the building’s south side don’t have windows, and the paintings could serve as “windows” to those employees.

The bank’s collection includes some 4,100 artworks, featured in all of Zions’ buildings and its 122 bank branches. The oldest paintings, Anderson estimated, date back to the early 1880s and 1890s — a decade or so after the bank’s founding in 1873.

“It really wasn’t put together as a collection,” Anderson said. “It was put together to help artists and to encourage the arts in Salt Lake.”

How the collection began

The collection, Anderson said, was started by Tibby Simmons — the wife of Roy Simmons, who acquired Zions First National Bank in 1960, with other partners.

“He ran the bank, and she was there beside him at every step, and so she would buy the art that would go on to the branch buildings,” Anderson said. “They did it to not only beautify the surroundings and make people happy to work there and customers happy to come in, but she also did it to support the artists.”

Anderson said “almost all” of the paintings are landscapes, created by Utah artists. “I love the paintings, and I love them because of what they portray and what they show,” he said.

In his own office, Anderson said he used to have antique Navajo blankets and “painting of landscapes with teepees and Indians.”

Anderson’s philosophy on having art in Zions’ banking spaces is similar to the Simmonses’ original ideas.

“It makes the building more enjoyable and a better place to come,” Anderson said. “If you look at those offices downstairs without that art there, it’d be a dark office, so it makes the environment better, and it makes it hopefully more enjoyable for customers to come in.”

It’s important, Anderson said, to make the environment more welcoming for all — especially after the COVID-19 pandemic — and to encourage people to come in.

The art and the business work together, Anderson said. “They’re both essential,” he said. “The bank provides financing that will build a business or allow you to build a home, and the artist creates something that will add to the beauty of our culture. So, hopefully, they both create value in that way.”

Helping the artists

One of the collection’s more contemporary works is by Ben Steele, an artist in Helper, and was commissioned for Zions Bank’s 150th anniversary last year. Steele’s work takes a fun, creative approach to focusing on the bank’s history.

Steele — who said he feels “honored” to have a work in the bank’s collection — said he came to know Anderson because he has become a presence in Utah’s art scene. Steele studied with retired University of Utah art professors David Dornan and Paul Davis, who helped establish Helper’s art scene and knew Anderson.

Eventually, Anderson visited Steele’s studio space and proposed the idea of doing a piece.

“My style would be somewhere between that kind of traditional and contemporary, and blending those two,” Steele said.

Steele said he watched a video — showing the bank’s 150-year history in 150 seconds — and started brainstorming with his wife, Melanie, about “what would fit Zions.” He pitched some ideas, and showed them “a few older paintings of mine.”

They thought of such things as recreating the downtown Salt Lake City statue of Brigham Young — the one across the street from Zions Bank’s home office — out of Play-Doh. That, Steel said, became “a jumping-off point” to integrate elements of the video with the “fascinating part of Utah culture.”

“You get Brigham Young — kind of the head of church and state at that time, creating banks and creating universities, and doing all these things that are kind of the backbone of Utah now,” Steele said, calling the legendary Utah Territory governor and Latter-day Saint prophet “the grand organizer of it all.”

Steele said his playful approach came together as he tried to “layer all the different components” into the image — such as a Monopoly board and a Scrabble tile.

Artist Ruby Chacón — who founded Mestizo Institute for Culture and Arts in Salt Lake City in 2003, and now lives in Sacramento, Calif. — has made art for Zions Bank, both indoor and outdoor. She said two of her paintings are in Zions’ collection, and she painted a mural at the bank’s branch at 1635 S. Redwood Road, Salt Lake City.

For the mural, she said she was told that it would go in a playroom space, and would be seen by families and kids. “I just wanted to do something that was nurturing, so I did a couple of mothers,” she said of the colorful painting.

Chacon said she likes to create spaces of belonging, through representation in her art. In one of her paintings in Zions’ collection, she painted members of her family.

In one painting, she said, there is a man coming out with a deed to his home, which she said represents advancement and the support of banking through loans.

Being in Zions’ collection is an honor, Chacón said, but it goes farther than that for her.

“It’s really important to have people of color represented [in] their collections, but also women,” she said. “It’s really important that they did that and that they chose me to be able to do that.”

Chacón added that “representation, if you don’t see yourself as part of that space, then you feel on the outside and in the margins.”

A value not counted in dollars

A representative with Zions Bank said the company loans its works out to several entities, including the Governor’s Mansion, Utah Tech University, the Orrin G. Hatch Foundation (of which Anderson is the board chair) and facilities at the University of Utah — including the Thomas S. Monson Center.

The bank, Anderson said, also hosts four art shows a year — in Salt Lake City, Provo, St. George and Boise, Idaho — with 90 artists at each show. The bank tends to buy between 15 and 20 paintings at each show. Most of the collection’s art is purchased, though some is commissioned.

There is no online archive or catalog for people to see the collection in its entirety, Anderson said. “We hope that people will come into our branches and enjoy the art, because there’s art in every branch,” he said.

Alisa McCusker, senior curator at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, said a private or corporate collection, like Zions Bank’s, doesn’t have the same impact on a community that a museum might — but it’s still significant that Zions “recognizes the importance of art and investing in art.”

“No, it’s not the same thing, but it has merit and it has value in the idea of seeing value in art,” McCusker said. “Them having original art on display in their branch locations is a way to not just show sort of hope … but that they’re emphasizing their commitment to supporting the arts, and in particular in the local and regional community.”

It’s interesting, McCusker said, the direction that the bank’s collection takes.

“It hasn’t just been full of what is the most valuable, or what has the potential for paying off as an investment,” she said. “They’re placing an importance on the human value and the aesthetic value of that experience.”

Tribune business reporter Shannon Sollitt contributed to this report.