On November 16, at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, GCI hosted an expansive gallery of historical Glen Canyon photography, featuring works from legendary river runners like Katie Lee, Tad Nichols, Bruce Berger, and Bud Rusho. It also highlighted modern photography of restoring canyons from James Kay, Nick Woolley, Bill Wolverton, and Elias Butler.

GCI founder Rich Ingebretsen welcomed the crowd of over 400 people at the event, recounting how David Brower helped shape the organization in the early days and create the Brower Conservation Award to celebrate environmental champions. He reflected on past recipients like Martin Litton, Katie Lee, Terry Tempest Williams, and Yvon Chouinard.

We showed the films Seldom Seen and Love of Place, documentary shorts that tell the stories of Ken Sleight and Bill Wolverton, respectively. Ken took the stage and told the audience about meeting Ed Abbey and reading the manuscript of The Monkey Wrench Gang for the first time. He recalled his conversations with “Cactus Ed” in the Grand Caynon about the need to get Glen Canyon back. With youthful enthusiasm, Ken fired up the crowd about coninuing to fight for the river, and how important it is that our movement continues to progress today.

The evening concluded with the presentation of the Brower Award to our longtime friend, Glen Canyon explorer, and former Escalante Ranger Bill Wolverton. We honored Bill for his decades of fighting invasive Russian Olive Trees along the Escalante River, and for his meticulous photographic work of the side canyons that began emerging when Lake Powell started to recede. His persistent documentation and cataloguing of images amounts to the first real study of Glen Canyon’s restoration, and is now playing a key role in the scientific research of taking place in the canyon.

Please see photographs from the evening below.