Image: Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art is marking its exhibition 'Altered States in the Acid West' with a special screening of Peter Fonda’s 'The Hired Hand' (1971) on July 23, 2026. The event runs from 6 to 9 p.m. MST at UMOCA in Salt Lake City and is presented in conjunction with the museum’s exhibition, which continues through August 29, 2026.
The screening places the film within the Acid Western tradition that also informs the exhibition. UMOCA describes 'The Hired Hand' as a meditative, visually striking take on the Western, one that blends the genre’s familiar visual language with the countercultural spirit of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The museum says the film explores friendship, freedom, memory and the American landscape, and notes its soundtrack by Bruce Langhorne has helped make it a cult classic and a touchstone of the genre.
Before the film, musician Chaz Prymek of Lake Mary will lead a listening session inspired by Langhorne’s original score. According to UMOCA, Prymek will use banjo, guitar and piano to create layered sonic landscapes that echo the film’s spacious and contemplative mood, serving as an introduction to the screening.
'Altered States in the Acid West' draws on the acid western genre, which UMOCA says emerged in the 1970s alongside countercultural movements and a growing distrust of inherited histories. The exhibition presents art and film that upend the Western’s heroes, landscapes and myths through surreal imagery, psychedelia and spiritual inquiry. Rather than treating the West as a place of destiny or conquest, the exhibition frames it as unstable terrain shaped by encounter, contradiction and uncertainty.
The museum’s exhibition text says 'Altered States in the Acid West' examines how the American West has been imagined as a promised land of Manifest Destiny, a symbol of rugged individualism, a site of paranormal speculation and a resource to be extracted and consumed. It also addresses deeper histories in the region, including colonization, racial violence and cultural erasure, and brings together Indigenous practices, cultural and spiritual traditions, histories of extraction and critical re-readings of Western lore.
The exhibition features works by 23 artists, including Ileana Alarcón, Janna Avner, Will Bruno, Phillip Cash Cash (Nez Perce, Cayuse), Paula Castillo, Russel Albert Daniels, Drew Dodge, Jim Frazer, Levi Jackson, Jim Mangan, Daryl Celeste Meador, Diego Medina, Martín Nuñez, Sarah M. Rodriguez, Jonathan Ryan, Shelby Shadwell, Rick Silva, Gilmore Scott, Margaret R. Thompson, Dani Tull, José Villalobos and Emmi Whitehorse. UMOCA lists 'Altered States in the Acid West' as on view from January 16 to August 29, 2026, in its Main Gallery, Lower Level.
