What Has Been the Twofold Purpose of Mormon Art?
"'Virtuous, Lovely, or of Good Report': How the Church building Has Fostered the Arts," Ensign, July 1977, 81
When the Saints tuckered a swamp in Illinois or dug ditches to carry water into western desert valleys, they weren't just edifice cities and farms—they were out to create a civilization. And Nauvoo didn't fit at all into the mold of an austere puritanical community: from the beginning music and dancing celebrated the Saints' cracking occasions, while hymns and poesy were used to worship God forth with their prayers.
The tradition connected in the Due west. Musicians were considered a vital part of every colony. Dramas played to eager audiences, not only in Salt Lake City only in meetinghouses all over the Church. Sculptors, poets, architects, composers—they were encouraged and supported by Church members and the Church organization.
Why the Church building'due south accent on the arts, especially in the early on days, when every loaf of bread was the result of a long, hard struggle with the soil, when every dollar was earned twice over by dawn-to-dusk attention to the building of the kingdom? How did they notice the time?
They found the time because the arts were not considered to be "extras." They were a vital part of Zion. As early as 1834, Banana President of the Church Oliver Cowdery wrote, "We believe in embracing good wherever it may be constitute; of proving all things, and belongings fast [to] that which is righteous."1 Eight years later, the Prophet Joseph Smith recommitted the Church to following Paul'southward admonition: "If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of skilful report, or praiseworthy, we seek afterward these things."2
The Saints take produced art from the beginning. Some of it has been adept enough to compare favorably with the all-time worldly art being produced at the fourth dimension. Some of information technology has been homespun and humble. Only whatsoever the quality by the standards of the world, Mormon art has achieved its purpose: It has touched the lives of Church members and nonmembers with a message of warmth, beauty, and meaning, carrying the ideals and messages of the gospel, filled with the dear and beauty and forcefulness of the Mormon people.
Joseph Smith Menstruation, 1830–1846
The Lord asked Emma Smith to collect hymns for the Church simply a few months after it was organized. The first hymnals did not include the music—melodies were learned and passed on by rote. Instead, the hymnals were books of poetry to be sung to the familiar tunes. The early hymnbook contained ninety poems, of which thirty-nine had been written by Saints, including some that are still favorites, like "Redeemer of Israel," "Gently Enhance the Sacred Strain," and "The Spirit of God Like a Fire Is Burning."
Music began the Latter-day Saint artistic tradition, but distinctive architecture soon followed and has continued to this day. Temple-edifice was the early Saints' supreme concrete artistic expression of their love for and dedication to the Lord. The Kirtland Temple'south original plastered exterior glistened with pulverized china and glassware, sacrificed by the Saints so the starting time temple of this dispensation would polish similar their faith in the Lord.3
Though the builders of the Kirtland Temple were by no means all skilled artisans, a national survey of historic American buildings described the result of their labors as being "so harmonious as to heighten the question if they may not have been inspired as were the builders of the cathedrals of old."4
The Nauvoo Temple was then original that 1 architect commented, "The Temple combined a distinctive architectural mass and original details to reverberate fully the unique amalgam of the Mormon religious approach."5 Although other Mormon buildings of the catamenia looked very much like other gimmicky buildings and consequently reflected both the all-time and worst of gimmicky American taste, those first-generation temples embodied a distinctive architectural harmony.
Temporarily at peace in Nauvoo, the Church had time to nourish the cultural arts that promote social unity. Even in Kirtland, the School of the Prophets deputed evening classes in vox and the Kirtland choir had a fine reputation. And bands were organized at Nauvoo in 1840. Under William Pitt the Nauvoo Brass Ring performed at the Masonic Hall, and subsequently at the Music or Concert Hall, which could seat seven or eight hundred people. Musical instruction was offered by the Nauvoo University, the Nauvoo Singing School, and Mrs. Pitchforth'due south Piano Schoolhouse.
In such a musical temper, public dancing was a popular cultural activity. Candlelit, formal assurance became highlights of social club in Nauvoo, though many Mormons, converted from ascetic Protestant sects that had prohibited dancing, stumbled through the steps with unaccustomed feet. Elder Orson Hyde described the problem of his beau apostle, Parley P. Pratt, when the quadrilles and cotillions were start introduced:
"I observed brother Parley standing in the figure, and he was making no motion particularly, but upwards and down. Says I, 'Brother Parley, why don't you lot move forward?' Says he, 'When I retrieve which way I am going, I forget the pace; and when I call back of the step, I forget which way to go.'"6
To remedy such plights, the Nauvoo Dancing School held evening lessons at the Masonic Hall.
The Prophet Joseph Smith introduced drama into Nauvoo, forming a dramatic company in which Brigham Immature, Erastus Snow, George A. Smith, and other prominent Latter-day Saints acted. A Nauvoo school of dramatics was opened by a "Mr. J. M. and Miss Cole." When veteran histrion Thomas A. Lyne was converted to the Church in Philadelphia, he came to Nauvoo and produced such plays every bit William Tell, Damon and Pithias, and Pizarro. Brigham Young distinguished himself as an actor in the role of the Peruvian high priest in Pizarro, leading the chorus and visitor of actors into an Incan temple. Later on Thomas A. Lyne, "with a merry twinkle in his eye," told an interviewer, "I've always regretted having bandage Brigham Immature for the part of the high priest. … He's been playing the grapheme with great success always since."7
Early Utah Period, 1847–1900
As the pioneers struggled for survival in Utah, the arts were championed by Brigham Young, who understood how music and drama could break the monotony of privation and concrete labor. "Tight-laced religious professors of the nowadays generation have a horror at the sound of a fiddle," he declared, probably remembering his puritanical upbringing. "There is no music in hell, for all adept music belongs to heaven."8
Music and dancing crossed the plains with the Saints. Merely two weeks after the settlers arrived in Salt Lake Valley, a choir was formed by a group of English language and Welsh singers. Eventually housed in the new Tabernacle, this choir took on the name of the bang-up building. Conductors George Devil-may-care and Evan Stephens trained the Tabernacle Choir into a technically excellent and spiritually soaring ensemble.
Music was not bars to Salt Lake City, either. Brigham Young insisted that each colonizing party take a musical leader; he subsidized two music classes, which were crowded with students; he even called "musical missionaries" to sing, lead choirs, and play instruments in the outlying settlements.9
The result was singing of such high quality that world travelers Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley, afterwards hearing the Salt Lake Choir in the 1850s, wrote, "The Mormons have a feeling for sacred music … in no notable degree surpassed by that which is heard either under the roof of Westminster [Abbey], or the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel." The singing in a Church meeting in Cedar Metropolis they found "good beyond anything to be expected in such a identify."x
Vocal and instrumental music of all kinds abounded, just the brass band reigned supreme on public occasions. In the spring of 1850 the Nauvoo Brass Band was reorganized and, aided past President Immature's $90 donation, attired themselves in uniforms of white dress coats, white pantaloons, and white muslin cravats, with sky-bluish sashes and straw hats for striking contrast. Past the 1860s in that location were at least twoscore bands scattered throughout the territory, and past 1875 at that place were twice that number. Few early Utah celebrations occurred, including the laying of the cornerstone of the Table salt Lake Temple, without the participation of a ring.
The crowning symbol of the Church's commitment to music, however, was the Tabernacle Organ. Frontier weather made its structure such a Herculean undertaking that even Brigham Immature paused earlier the task. "Can we practise this thing?" he asked equally he paced back and forth before giving his approval. Joseph Ridges, its builder, remembered the tension of testing the first piping and his exultant relief when the sound was true and rich: "Information technology was as if God had spoken and the whole chorus of angels were shouting Hosanna!!" Those first pipes were made largely of native Utah woods—and much of the early casing, many original pipes, and the musical instrument'due south cherished resonance accept been advisedly retained even though subsequent renovations have multiplied the number of pipes from 700 to over 10,000.11
Brigham Young once stated that if placed upon a carnivorous island with the charge of civilizing the inhabitants, he would construct a theater.12 In the autumn of 1850, the Musical and Dramatic Association was organized in Table salt Lake City. After known as the Deseret Dramatic Association, this ambitious grouping produced Shakespeare's hard Othello as early equally 1856. Early makeshift stages gave way in 1862 to the Church-constructed Table salt Lake Theater, which impressed such Eastern travelers every bit F. H. Ludlow, who commented, "I was greatly astonished to detect in the desert heart of the Continent a place of public amusement which, regarding condolement, capacity, and beauty, has but two or three superiors in the U.s.."13 President Immature himself congenital its main chandelier from an oxcart wheel and donated props from his household. He oft visited performances and rehearsals; he oversaw nightly financial reports; he chosen talented Church building members to theatrical "missions"; and, according to one contemporary, he "knew more about the needs of a big stage than whatsoever manager now living.14
His enthusiasm was widely shared. About every Table salt Lake City meetinghouse doubled every bit a theater, while many congregations, even in outlying areas, built upwardly their own dramatic companies and productions. The Salt Lake Theater presided over this bustle, condign a "must" stop on the national theatrical circuit. Information technology was so successful that a non-Mormon theatrical manager wrote:
"Sweeping as the argument may seem, I exercise not believe the theatre has ever rested upon a higher plane, both as to its purpose and in its offerings, than at Salt Lake City, the uppercase of Mormondom."15
Naturally the theater influenced the visual arts. Many early Mormon artists painted driblet curtains and stage sets. In addition, equally the Church building began building temples, it needed artists for the murals. George Ottinger, Daniel Weggeland, and C. C. A. Christensen, among others, contributed to the Manti, Logan, and St. George temples. President Wilford Woodruff, in lodge to gear up artists to finish the Table salt Lake Temple, called "art missionaries" in 1890. Lorus Pratt, Edwin Evans, J. B. Fairbanks, and John Hafen studied at the prestigious Academie Julian in Paris on small Church stipends plus their own meager resources. Such encouragement gave Mormon painting a solid tradition.
The pioneer menses also produced some distinctive buildings. Ii contempo architectural critics selected Brigham Young's official residence in Table salt Lake Metropolis, the Beehive House, as one of 30 examples of superior domestic compages, and described it as "a dwelling of comfort, distinction, and architectural merit that would do credit to whatsoever long-established community of high cultural standards anywhere."xvi
Simply the greatest praise, both professional and popular, has been reserved for the Salt Lake Temple and the Tabernacle. The imposing dignity of the Salt Lake Temple's modified Gothic architecture has come up to symbolize pioneer devotion and sacrifice; and architects accept showered praise on the Tabernacle's structural ingenuity. For over one hundred years, the Tabernacle was the earth'southward largest hall without internally supporting columns. The beautiful pale tabernacles of the nineteenth century—like those in St. George and Brigham City, to name only two—have received high marks for their proportion, details, and craftsmanship.17
Auxiliary organizations take encouraged the arts from their beginnings. When the Relief Society was founded in Nauvoo, one of its purposes was to farther cultural development. Several decades subsequently, such leaders every bit Zina D. H. Young were challenging the Society "to cultivate our habitation talent and stimulate our sisters to read, and to write." One of the outset tasks of the Sun School Union and its Juvenile Instructor in the late 1860s was to circulate music sheets throughout the Church building and to teach children the musical arts. Every bit early as 1880, the Principal Association'due south talent fairs displayed drawings and paintings by children, while the organization'south martial bands serenaded local communities, like Farmington, Utah, with resounding tones produced past "flutes, piccolos, a triangle, and three drums."18
The Young Men's and Immature Women'southward Common Improvement Associations (MIAs) were peculiarly vigorous. First-generation Utahns had organized themselves into "Polysophical," "Philomathian," and "Universal Scientific" societies and later on into "Ward Institutes" to promote cultural appreciation through informal discussions, debates, and performances.
A generation afterwards, flourishing MIAs had absorbed and expanded these activities. The MIA magazine, the Contributor, focused on Mormon arts and letters. And in 1891 the organization held its start massive musical contest where more than 2,000 spectators heard groups vie for the offset prize, awarded for the best choral rendition of Evan Stephens's "Invocation to Harmony." Other vocal and instrumental contests followed during the next decade and into our century.
As the pioneer menstruum airtight and the twentieth century began, MIAs were clearly seeking to respond to President John Taylor's before challenge to "stand in regard to education and literacy, the sciences, the arts and intelligence of every kind, equally loftier above the nations of the earth, equally we practice to-day in regard to religious matters."19
The Modern Period, 1900 to Present
When the Beginning Presidency instituted the "Home Evening Program" in 1915 they specifically recommended "singing hymns, songs, and instrumental music" as part of every family unit's program.20 MIA, ward, and Church programs continued the tradition of drama and music that still produces almanac roadshows and ward choirs.
The twentieth century brought other new emphases in the arts. Fifty-fifty though the pioneer past was increasingly praised and historic, the Church also sponsored fine art that reflected greater diversity and proficiency.
For instance, Mormon sculpture really began in the twentieth century, though President Woodruff and the Outset Presidency had selected Cyrus E. Dallin, a Utah native of Mormon ancestry, for several projects in the century before. Among the best loved are the Angel Moroni on the eastward key spire of the Common salt Lake Temple and the Brigham Immature memorial at the intersection of S Temple and Main streets in Salt Lake City. Although Dallin's sculptures later on won him a worldwide reputation, he remembered his "Moroni" as bringing him "nearer to God than anything I ever did."21
In the twentieth century, Mahonri Young, a grandson of President Young and perhaps Mormonism's most noted sculptor, created the Bounding main Gull Monument, Joseph and Hyrum (originally intended for the exterior niches of the Salt Lake Temple simply now positioned on Temple Square), and This Is the Identify Memorial at the mouth of Emigration Canyon in Utah. Avard Fairbanks and Torlief Knaphus captured the pathos of the exodus from Nauvoo with their respective Winter Quarters and Handcart Family works, and both besides contributed to friezes and baptismal fonts in Latter-day Saint temples. Arno Alfred Steinecke contributed bas-reliefs for the Common salt Lake, Logan, St. George, and Manti temples. Gutzon Borglum, the son of a Danish convert, was the creator of the 4 nifty faces carved on Mount Rushmore. Edward J. Fraughton, sculptor of the heroic Mormon Battalion Monument in San Diego, was commissioned by the Sons of the Utah Pioneers to create the 8-pes statue that now stands in the Brigham Immature Cemetery in Salt Lake Metropolis. It balances a scene of parents burying their baby at Winter Quarters with one of a family rejoicing at their entry into Salt Lake Valley.
More recently, Franz Johansen, a Brigham Young Academy professor, and his associates made impressive bronze plaques for the gate and doors of the Washington Temple. The viii designs testify such Mormon symbols equally a sun face, a moon, the concentric circles of eternity, the planets in their order, and seven circles and pentagons for the seven dispensations. The largest of all Church-deputed sculptures, however, is the thirteen-piece Garden of Women at Nauvoo. Commissioned by the Relief Gild, sculptors Dennis V. Smith and Florence Peterson Hansen are preparing the statues for dedication in 1978.
The photographic camera has also fabricated its contribution to Mormon fine art. Pioneer photographers Charles W. Carter, Marsena Cannon, and Charles R. Savage recorded our pioneer past. George Edward Anderson of Springville, Utah, when called to an English mission in 1907, stopped both coming and going to photograph such Latter-day Saint landmarks as the Sacred Grove in upstate New York. "I must have a moving-picture show of this sacred spot," he said. "When I return all volition exist changed. … Who will run into them equally I see them now?" Recently the Smithsonian Institution and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts honored Anderson's sensitive photography past sponsoring traveling bicentennial exhibits of his work.22
In 1832 the Lord exhorted Joseph Smith and the Saints to seek wisdom from "the best books." (D&C 88:118.) Nineteenth-century Saints more often than not interpreted "all-time books" to hateful such applied or didactic literature as Orson F. Whitney's aspiring epic Elias or Nephi Anderson's Added Upon. The Millennial Star, the Contributor, the Young Women's Journal, and the independently published Woman'southward Exponent printed representative poesy from the world-renowned masters too as original works by aspiring Mormon writers.
In 1923 the Relief Society began its Eliza Roxey Snow Memorial Prize Poem Contest to promote Latter-day Saint writing, and followed it in 1942 with an annual prize for the best brusk story. The Relief Society's annual Eliza R. Snow poetry contest for women is now published in the Ensign. The New Era offers magazine subscriptions, greenbacks, and scholarships for excellence in writing, art, photography, and music composition past teenagers and immature adults, while the Ensign gives adults cash prizes for manufactures, short stories, and poetry in its own annual competition.
Today in that location is a large and growing body of able Latter-mean solar day Saint writers. Their work can be sampled in such recent anthologies equally A Believing People and 22 Young Mormon Writers. 23 Other fiction, poetry, essays, and manufactures by Latter-24-hour interval Saints appear regularly in the Friend, New Era, and Ensign; the fifteen international magazines; BYU Studies; and various independent publications aimed at the Mormon people.
Mormon theater is however very much alive, although a sluggish economic system and rival professional entertainment ended the Common salt Lake Theater in the late 1920s. In 1972, for the purpose of creating "uplifting and gracious amusement," the Church refurbished an quondam Salt Lake theater and renamed it the Promised Valley Playhouse.24 Its amateur casts usually present calorie-free classics along with an occasional Latter-mean solar day Saint drama such as Elder S. Dilworth Young'southward The Long Route Back or Carol Lynn Pearson's The Guild Is Honey. Brigham Immature University's theatre seasons nowadays classics, fine modern plays, and excellent original Mormon plays. It has also provided opportunities for Mormon writers to accept their creations first presented to an audition. Doug Stewart's A Mean solar day, a Night, and a Mean solar day and his popular musical (with composer Lex D'Azevedo) Saturday's Warrior were first performed at BYU, as were Martin Kelly'southward And They Shall Be Gathered, Orson Scott Card's (with composer Robert Stoddard) musical almost Moses, Rock Tables, Clinton Larson'southward powerful poetic dramas, Robert Elliott's play near missionary life, Fires of the Mind, and works by Thomas Rogers, Frances Smeath, and Charles Whitman, to proper name merely a few. In add-on, numerous individual "little" theaters in different areas of the Church take provided an impetus for Latter-twenty-four hour period Saint drama. Early on twentieth-century "amateur home-written theatricals" evolved into "roadshows." More than than 3,800 of these productions were written and presented in 1960, and records show that local wards liked drama plenty to do another 3,300 traditional plays per year.
Latter-24-hour interval Saints accept also produced religious pageants, beginning with the gigantic Message of the Ages commemorating the Church's centennial in 1930. Seven years later the annual Hill Cumorah Pageant was launched, since then alluring thousands of members and nonmembers to exist inspired past its bulletin. By 1976 Church members were presenting major pageants at Nauvoo, Independence, Manti, and Oakland.
Motion-picture show is the only art form that began in the twentieth century. The Brigham Young University Movement Movie Department, founded in 1952, has produced 275 religious and educational films that have touched Mormon audiences while receiving national and even international critical acclaim. Recently such films as Coronary Counter-Attack and The Great Dinosaur Discovery won the nationally prestigious Cine Golden Eagle Honour and represented the United States in international competition, while Cypher in the Snow, in addition to its own Cine Award, has been given thirteen other national and international honors and has been shown extensively before Cosmic and Protestant audiences throughout the United States.
And music has never been more successful in winning friends and expressing Mormon behavior than it is today. Offset with its silver medal at the Chicago World'south Fair in 1893, the Tabernacle Choir has been e'er more widely acclaimed. Past 1976 it had sung for the inaugurations of two United States presidents and performed in the longest running broadcast serial in the history of network radio. Eugene Ormandy, conductor of the Philadelphia Symphony, called it "the greatest choir I have ever conducted."25
Alexander Schreiner, current Tabernacle organist, may well exist, as ane critic suggested, "the nearly pregnant musical performer in LDS Church building history" and one of "the Western earth'due south meridian organists."26
Latter-day Saint composers have added to our hymnal and created such major works as Robert Cundick's Song of Nephi and Crawford Gates's Promised Valley and Colina Cumorah Symphony. And Leroy Robertson's Book of Mormon Oratorio, completed in 1947 with partial support from a Church commission, remains every bit one of Mormonism's most significant musical works. Outstanding faculty and student composers at BYU—and elsewhere—hope a continuation of the smashing Mormon musical tradition with major works like Merrill Bradshaw'southward oratorio The Restoration (1974).
Church leaders have connected their involvement in the musical arts. President Heber J. Grant called the first Church building Music Commission and also established a customs cultural middle specializing in the musical arts. The Church-endemic McCune School of Music and Art served Utah for over one-half a century equally an accredited institution of music, offering bachelor's and primary's degrees and sponsoring a yearly serial of symphonic orchestra concerts. When the professional person Utah Symphony Orchestra was founded, the Church building gave it hire-costless use of the Tabernacle, and more recently leased at a nominal fee the footing for its new community concert hall.
Since its establishment in 1969, the 400-member Mormon Youth Symphony and Chorus has received national recognition for its goggle box and radio broadcasts. Later on a guest appearance in 1972, the distinguished American composer and conductor, Howard Hanson, praised the group for possessing "the spirit, the soul, and the eternity of neat music."27
The Latter-day Saint zeal for social dancing continued into our century, and in the mid-1960s Church auxiliaries sponsored over 13,000 dances, which drew more than half a million participants each year. The Church building besides sponsored massive trip the light fantastic festivals. Salt Lake'south Saltair resort housed the starting time such festival in 1928, and under the direction of W. O. Robinson, the program expanded until most Church wards contributed dancers from their local dance program, During the 1950s and 1960s more 30,000 spectators crowded into the Academy of Utah Stadium to see 10,000 colorfully costumed dancers perform waltzes, rumbas, and fox trots. A writer for Trip the light fantastic Magazine called the 1958 issue the "ballroom pageant of the year."28
Other forms of dance also prospered. After Virginia Tanner'due south Children's Dance Theater, an outgrowth of the McCune School of Music, performed in 1953 earlier a Washington, D.C., audience of dance professionals, there was a moment's hush followed by wild bravoes. The performance by the young Utah girls had captured the hearts of the experts.29
During the American bicentennial, an outburst of action underlined the vitality of Mormon arts. The Tabernacle Choir toured the eastern United states of america, including performances in Washington, D.C., at President Gerald R. Ford's invitation. An estimated 1 million people heard the Choir's July Fourth concert at the Washington Monument. Millions more heard via television. The Heritage Arts Festival, held in conjunction with the MIA June Conference in 1975, presented plays, concerts, trip the light fantastic demonstrations, musicals, films, readers theater, and a huge display of Church history memorabilia to celebrate the Mormon contribution to American civilization. And local Church groups produced over 20 bicentennial stage productions, complemented by the Church building-supported musical Threads of Celebrity, written by Doug Stewart and Lex D'Azevedo, which played earlier primarily Latter-24-hour interval Saint audiences in the American West.
As the Church building expands, Latter-day Saints throughout the globe are expressing their testimonies through local art forms. Regional and area conferences feature such cultural programs every bit Brazilians dancing their native heritage, Finns portraying in drama the emigration of progenitors, or Koreans demonstrating their historic martial arts. The Polynesian Cultural Center at Laie, Hawaii, preserves and displays the customs and crafts of Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Hawaii, and Tahiti, and of the Maori people. The middle and its well-nigh 200 native guides have received rave reviews from such different sources as Honolulu's Bishop Museum and Broadway'southward publication, Variety. thirty
Brigham Young University's Festival of Mormon Arts each spring presents distinctive Latter-mean solar day Saint plays, lectures, dances, exhibitions, concerts, panel discussions, and fine art shows. The Church Curator's Segmentation, organized in 1973, is actively collecting and preserving Latter-day Saint arts and artifacts. Church building authorities are studying the possibility of constructing a museum devoted to the LDS cultural past. A new hymnal stressing the message of the Restoration has been authorized. Latter-twenty-four hours Saint artists, poets, musicians, dancers, sculptors, dramatists, and writers can exist found in almost every stake.
Latter-day Saint culture is still young, yet through arduousness, with minimal resources, information technology has survived. It thrives today—though sometimes Church audiences have been satisfied with the superficial, and sometimes Mormon artists, in an attempt to satisfy the "world," have neglected their religious traditions and and so take non communicated with Latter-day Saint audiences. Today, though the Church officially sponsors simply what is needed for special programs, artistic and determined artists are finding the Mormon audience increasingly set up to take and encourage excellence.
"The story of Mormonism," President Spencer W. Kimball has challenged, "has never been written nor painted nor sculpted nor spoken. It remains for inspired hearts and talented fingers however to reveal themselves. … [These artists] must be faithful, inspired, active Church members to give life and feeling and truthful perspective to a subject so worthy. … Our own talent, obsessed with dynamism from a crusade, could put into such a story life and heartbeats."31
Both pitched to G, this lead and tin pipe (14 1/two″ long; c. 1915) and wooden pipe (17 1/four″ long, excluding the pitch regulator) were removed from the Tabernacle Organ during remodelings. The wooden pipe may be from the original organ built in the 1860s; the screws were added later. (Church Curator'south Division, Church building Historical Department.)
Banner of the Deseret Dramatic Association (seventy″ x 82″, oil on textile). William Shakespeare presides over the Salt Lake Theater; two Greek muses, probably Melpomene (tragedy) and Thalia (comedy) complete the scene. (Church Curator.)
Nauvoo Temple architect William Weeks made these studies of two stars and a sunday in the early 1840s. The sun, about hidden backside acanthus leaves, a classic decoration for Corinthian columns, was subsequently revised and so that more than of its confront showed. The Lion House-Beehive House complex, however standing in Salt Lake City, is one of the city's finest examples of early domestic architecture; the photograph (c. 1890) is a superb case of C. R. Savage's drinking glass negative productions. Emma Smith'south tiny 1835 edition, the first hymnbook, measures but ii 3/four″ by 4 1/2″. It is open up to Westward. W. Phelps's "The Spirit of God Like a Burn down Is Burning," sung at the dedication of the Kirtland Temple. (Church Archives.)
These pulpits in the west end of the Kirtland Temple'due south upper room are gorgeously carved; the initials stand for offices or callings in the priesthood. (Kirtland Temple endemic and maintained by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Twenty-four hours Saints, world headquarters, Independence, Mo.)
The handsome brass doorknobs on the Table salt Lake Temple doors include the beehive motif, the motto "Holiness to the Lord," and the temple's years of construction, 1853–1893.
BYU sculptor Franz Johansen adapted traditional temple motifs for his modern grouping of seven medallions for the gate and the e and west doors of the Washington Temple. In statuary with gold-leaf, this medallion depicts the planets, symbol of angelic gild.
Huddled together in silent sorrow over the death of their kid, these parents mourn The Tragedy of Winter Quarters. Avard Fairbanks's bronze sculpture, erected in 1936 at Winter Quarters most Omaha, commemorates the 340 Saints who died betwixt the fall of 1846 and the jump of 1848, virtually of them children.
Gutzon Borglum, son of a Danish convert and built-in near Deport Lake, Idaho, sculpted these sixty-foot heads at Mountain Rushmore in South Dakota, a project that began in 1927 and concluded in 1940. They represent the founding (Washington), expansion (Jefferson), preservation (Lincoln), and unification (Theodore Roosevelt) of the Us. (Church Graphics Library.)
Celebrated internationally for his sinewy sculptures of working men, Mahonri M. Young here portrays Hyrum Smith in a mood of dignity and serenity. The life-sized statue (1910) now stands on Temple Square.
Sixty-8 hundred dancers in red, white, and blue spell out "MIA" frontwards and backwards at the 1963 All-Church Dance Festival, "Beyond the Blue Horizons." (Church Graphics Library.)
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Source: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1977/07/virtuous-lovely-or-of-good-report-how-the-church-has-fostered-the-arts?lang=eng