When the legendary artist Jim Jones, known for his painting of Zion and the Grand Canyon, died in 2009, he donated his Rockville home, and 15 of his late paintings, as well as the copyrights, to the Southern Utah University. The Cedar City native's gift was to provide the university with the seed money to eventually form the Southern Utah Museum of Art and almost eight years later, this dream has come to completion.

The new museum is part of the $39.1 million Beverly Taylor Sorenson Center for the Arts campus—a 5.5-acre master planned complex that links downtown Cedar City with the Southern Utah University Campus. The museum itself comprises 28,000 square feet of adaptable gallery and exhibition space that will accommodate the special collection of Jones as well as regularly displaying the work of students, faculty, regional artists and juried shows. 

It has been designed by the Los Angeles-based firm, Brooks + Scarpa, who were inspired by the southern Utah slot canyons featured heavily in Jones' work. The building, an unusually contemporary structure for the area, features a sweeping, canyon-like roof that cantilevers 120 feet to the west to create 6,000 square feet of protected outdoor space while also shading the art housed inside a western facing glass façade. The street facing exterior, a curtain wall of off-white fiberglass, features a textured finish that creates subtle shadows in the sun while the rest, clad in undulating panels, mimics the texture of a sheer cliff face. 

Inspired by the dramatic sandstone formations at nearby Bryce Canyon and Mt. Zion National Park, the buildings main architectural feature—the roof—uses the sloped design to forego mechanical drains. Instead, the architects designed it to slope to canyons on each end of the building where the roof water and snow melt can be seen from the street running off the roof, down the building facade and then disappearing into concealed wells at the base of the structure where it is collected and re-charged back into the aquifer.

The complex also features sculpture gardens, parks and exterior spaces for live performance and public use. In addition to using the space to educate SUU students, the space also includes an education wing that will serve students in kindergarten through 12th grade throughout the surrounding five-county region.