Meridian Magazine : : Arts and Entertainment

International Testimony Meeting Without Words:
The Book of Mormon Art Competition at the Museum of Church History and Art

Meridian Magazine takes you on a gallery by gallery tour so you can see some of the faith-filled entries in the art competition. This week we begin with the first gallery.

*Special thanks to Ron Read for making these images available to us online.*

We cherish our testimony meetings where people we love, often with tears, try to capture in words their experiences of the holy. Our spirits leap and light in reply, knowing what they are saying that words can't touch.

Now, in an exhibit that extends until September 4, Latter-day Saint artists from thirty-eight countries are bearing testimony with oil, canvas, wood, and clay. They have stitched their testimony, quilted it. They have used their own cultural understanding and regional materials to say, "I believe." Walk through the three galleries at the Museum of Church History and Art where the 135 newly created works selected from among 453 entries are on display, and you are in an international testimony meeting. You almost feel to be hushed amongst these works from brothers and sisters representing Latin America, Canada, Great Britain, Europe, Russia, the Middle East, India, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Japan, China, and Taiwan

What becomes clear is we all see the tree of life or Nephi's ship or the stripling warriors through our own eyes. The expressions are personal, unique, customized to the experience and culture of each artist.

Just as God talks to each in his own language so that he might understand, so what comes forth in return is also in the individual language of the soul. Art, after all, is an expression of our language of the soul, our attempt to make sense of things.

Museum director Glen M. Leonard said, "Fifteen years ago when we launched the competition idea, LDS artists were producing landscapes and portraits and not much else. They were telling us that religious art had no market and therefore they weren't creating it. We decided to encourage them to take themes from the scriptures and Latter-day Saint lifestyle and create new works of art by offering prizes and purchase awards.

"The competition has generated a new approach to art and some new themes in art for Latter-day Saint artists around the world who might otherwise think that nobody cared about whether they bore their testimony using their skills and talents in art."

The New York Times noted, "Midcentury artists turned away from religion and toward modernist universalism. They kept beliefs pretty much to themselves, or abstracted them...Until recently the art world sanctioned little work with overt religious content unless it possessed a critical, subversive edge.

"Postmodernists, however, have begun to embrace religion as part of the culture. Now, spurred by the millennium, contemporary art can again be unabashedly faith-based."

"Much religious art is being created in the world now," agrees Leonard. "However, some of that art uses religious ideas and images in ways that emphasize the negative. I attended a contemporary religious art exhibit in St. Louis, and was interested that even though it was Christian art, there was an underlying sense of pessimism. Artists were portraying the ugliness and evil of the world, yet demonstrating that through Christ there was compassion for each person and his plight.

"Mormon artists tend to be upbeat and optimistic in their outlook, rather than emphasizing the healing of the negative," said Leonard. "Some would say Latter-day Saints art is too upbeat, not realistic enough. We have a lot of active Latter-day Saint artists who are proving their talents and abilities along the broad spectrum of themes and approaches. They are young and old and everywhere in between."

The market for Mormon art has come along way since the first competition held fifteen years ago. Now, many Latter-day Saint artists are creating art and supporting their families, and Mormons are looking to their own artists to supply the positive, family-centered art they want in their homes.

Gallery Tour
Come to the gallery at the Museum of Church History and Art that emphasizes the tree of life and themes from 1^st Nephi.

Click any of the images below to view details and begin your tour of the gallery.

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