Latter-day Saint Art Episode 10: Charting LDS Art

Jenny Champoux: Hello, and welcome to our final episode of Latter-day Saint Art, a limited series podcast from Wayfare Magazine. I'm your host, Jenny Champoux. Throughout this series, we've examined the artistic tradition of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we've talked with contributors to the book Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader. The book was published in September by Oxford University Press, with support from the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. If you're listening on the podcast, keep in mind that you can find a video, transcript, and images of the artworks at wayfaremagazine.org.

In this episode, we're looking at some of the broad themes introduced in the book. How has Latter-day Saint history and belief affected art production? And similarly, how has Latter-day Saint art affected faith and culture? We'll discuss the value of religious art, what makes it worthy of academic study, and what areas of Latter-day Saint art need further scholarship. [00:01:00]

Our guests today are Emily Larsen and Micah Christensen.

Emily Larsen is a Utah-based curator, museum professional, researcher, and collage artist. She currently serves as the executive director at the Springville Museum of Art, where she's worked in a variety of positions since 2014. Her research and writing focus on Utah artists and the Utah art scene, from 1880 to 1950. She has an M.A. in US History from the University of Utah.

Micah Christensen is a scholar of European, Asian, and American fine art, porcelain and decorative objects. He earned his doctorate in the history of art from University College London, and his master's in fine art from Sotheby's Institute. He served on the board of the Springville Museum of Art until last year and is now the director of the new Salt Lake Art Museum opening in 2026. Micah is also a partner at [00:02:00] Anthony's Fine Art and Antiques. He is a co-author of the Dictionary of Utah Fine Artists and the founder of the Zion Arts Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to showcasing works by professional and emerging Latter-day Saint artists.

Although Emily and Micah were not authors in the book, they are gifted and knowledgeable art historians and curators working in the Utah and Latter-day Saint space. I'm excited to have them join our discussion today, and I think adding their perspectives to this series shows just how much more work on Latter-day Saint art is being done out there and is still left to do. Emily and Micah have been friends of mine and colleagues for several years, and they're both doing incredible work. I can guarantee that you'll not only learn something new from them today, but you'll also be inspired by their enthusiasm and passion for this work.

Emily and Micah, thank you so much for talking with us today.

Micah Christensen: Thank you. It's great to be here.

Jenny Champoux: Emily, congrats on the annual Spring Salon that is currently at the Springville Museum of Art. I know that's a huge project. For our listeners who may not be familiar, can you tell us what the Spring Salon is and what role it plays in the Utah art scene?

Emily Larsen: Yeah, so the Spring Salon is one of the longest running and biggest juried art competition shows in Utah. So, it's an open call show anyone can enter. And we've been hosting it in Springville since 1922. So, it's a huge tradition. And this year we got about a thousand entries. We had jurors who came and drew it down to about 250, and it's kind of a snapshot of contemporary Utah art, what's happening in Utah art today.

It leans a little bit more towards representational art and traditional art than some of the other juried shows in the state. And is just a great celebration of Utah art and an opportunity for artists to show some of their best works [00:04:00] and be awarded for it. So, it's a fun, a fun tradition, and we'd love for everyone to come.

Jenny Champoux: Great. Thank you. Yeah. Is there, have you noticed any trends this year in the show or any themes that you see popping up?

Emily Larsen: You know, actually one thing that I think is really interesting about this show, sometimes we feel the shows are really a commentary on what's happening in the world, and there's a lot of, political or social commentary. And this year with everything that's going on in the world, we maybe expected that more.

But I think the artists are really using the art and art as a respite. Because it feels like it's really a celebration of art and fine art and is, I guess maybe less about current events than you would expect.

Jenny Champoux: Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Micah, you're joining us today from what will soon be the new Salt Lake Art Museum opening next year. Tell us about your vision for this new institution and what we can look forward to seeing [00:05:00] there.

Micah Christensen: Boy, I've never done this before. I don't know what to tell you. I've never started a museum! Well, the Salt Lake Art Museum will open officially in the spring of 2026 and it's housed in the historic B’nai Israel Temple, which was a synagogue built in 1890 on land that was given to the Jews in Salt Lake by Brigham Young. And my great-grandfather was a member of that congregation. I'm half Jewish by descent and I'm half Mormon. And well, I'm a mutt. And, it was a, a building that I'd always wanted. And, uh, there's a lot of construction going on in Salt Lake and the population is growing dramatically. It's doubled in the past five years in Salt Lake and it's supposed to double again by 2030. And the, uh, [00:06:00] it’s the first new art museum in Salt Lake since 1983, which, you know what, how we imagine our role is, is we'll play well with other museums. I was on the board of the Springville Museum of Art for more than 13 years. I'm still on the acquisitions committee for Springville. I see that our role is just to educate about Utah art and artists. And it's not much more complicated than that.

We’re hoping to have historic and living artists on a regular basis. Competitions here and there. Nothing like the Springville Museum's competition, but more like, you know, for one, one example is we're having a small competition that's more like an invitational of 15 of the country's best plein air painters, many from Utah, to [00:07:00] focus on the Great Salt Lake and to talk about its preservation. So, things like that that we're planning on our first, I can announce now, no one really knows this, that our first retrospective next spring we'll be opening with is James Christensen. And I think it'll be the first major show to happen since he passed, and we're working with the Christensen family now.

Jenny Champoux: Oh, great.

Micah Christensen: It's exciting. It's total chaos. And half the time it's really exciting. And the other half of the time you just, what was the quote that I heard the other day? You know you're on the right path if the path disappears. The path, the path has disappeared.

Jenny Champoux: That sounds really exciting. A lot of possibilities and exciting things coming. So, just so I understand, your museum then is just for artists that lived and worked in Utah or is just to [00:08:00] showcase Utah artists, but from any, any faith tradition or any time period or,

Micah Christensen: Yeah, there's no origin criteria. It's whether or not they were connected to Utah in a meaningful way.

Jenny Champoux: Okay.

Micah Christensen: you know, some of the shows we're looking at doing are maybe one on Emil Kosa, who trained with Alphonse Mucha then worked in California and was the only artist I know who won an Academy Award.

He did all the set design for Cleopatra and he did the 20th century Fox logo with the search lights. He invented that. But he spent about 30% of his time painting in Utah just because he loved the atmosphere. And he worked with a lot of artists that we know, like LeConte Stewart.

I mean, he's not strictly from Utah, but he painted in Utah a lot. I'm not going to do a lot of those shows. The plan is that Utah needs to just [00:09:00] know its artists better.

Jenny Champoux: I like that. I like that. And you also were involved in the publication a couple years ago on, was it the Dictionary of Utah Artists?

Micah Christensen: I got roped into the Dictionary of Utah Fine Artists project,

Jenny Champoux: Okay.

Micah Christensen: so there have, this was the fourth edition of the Dictionary of Utah Fine Artists. The last one I think was published in 1997 and it had about 1500 artists living and historic in it. And we increased that size to 4,500 roughly artists. I wrote myself about 900 biographies of artists.

Jenny Champoux: Wow.

Micah Christensen: And I got some of them right. Some of them. And, and we would try and talk with every artist we possibly could. It was a revelation. It was overwhelming. It was inspiring. And I think that it was just a testament to the idea that we come from a place that is inordinately [00:10:00] populated by people who create art. and presently, uh, it, it was really humbling. And if you're, if any of you have a hard time sleeping at night, buy a copy, you'll, you, it's truly like a dictionary. It's like you, it's not the kind of book you buy because you're just casually reading about art. It's like a reference book.

Jenny Champoux: Okay. Okay. Is Emily in the book? Because Emily, I know you're a practicing artist as well.

Emily Larsen: You know, I think Vern decided that I was not, um, my art was not worthy of inclusion as an artist, but I did, I did write about maybe like 15 or 20 of the bios for some of the historic women artists.

I’m a very, very small contributor, but not my collage art did not make it in as one of the 4,500, which I agree with. I agree with the decision.

Micah Christensen: You know, Emily, I'm in charge of the next edition. Who knows when it happens, but, you know, we'll have a [00:11:00] conversation.

Emily Larsen: I think my contributions as a museum professional are much more significant than my art contributions. But I love making art and that I think it's such a great, that that project is so important and is such a testament to the creative spirit of Utah and all the contributions that artists have made here, which it, it is fun to read about all the different people who have made art in Utah.

And, and I mean, like me, there's so many people. You can never get everyone in a project like that. So, there's always more work to do, which I think is true of Latter-day Saint art too. If we're talking about specific faith tradition, it's just, there's so many stories and so many people to talk about.

Jenny Champoux: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So, we're, this is our final episode of this series, looking at the Latter-day Saint Art Critical Reader. And the afterword was written by Laura Hurtado, who's another curator there in Utah. We all know, she’s done [00:12:00] fantastic work for years in the Utah and Latter-day Saint art scene.

She unfortunately isn't able to join us today, but we're going to use her afterword as the jumping off point for our discussion. And in her essay, she reflected on what she saw as the central tension in the book’s essays. And it was this desire by the Latter-day Saints to be seen as both unique and sort of different, and also at the same time to be accepted by the larger society.

And I think we see that theme throughout many of the essays in the book and in the art, it's reflected in the art. So, in earlier episodes that we did in the series, we saw how Saints, the earlier Saints, used art to project an image of refinement and normalcy. Even sometimes sending artwork back East to say, you know, kind of look at what we're doing out here. We’re just nice Americans building a beautiful [00:13:00] American settlement out here.

Laura points out in her essay that recently most pieces for the outside art world directly addressing Latter-day Saint issues tend towards a sort of exotic approach. So, sort of looking at sort of the weirdness or the strangeness of Latter-day Saint culture and practice.

I see that. But on the other hand, I also see that within the Church, it seems like there's been kind of a move by leaders and even members. And we see this like in the offerings at Deseret Book of a move towards more kind of typical Christian imagery that is less distinctly like Mormon and more just kind of Christian.

So, more crucifixion imagery. Yongsung Kim has been very popular with these images of Jesus. Jesus as the shepherd, or [00:14:00] Jesus in a field, or Jesus just smiling at us. I even see artists kind of turning to these Catholic visual devices in their framing or the format of the canvas and sometimes even the symbolism.

So, I mean, just, I see this sort of widening divide, right, between maybe some contemporary LDS artists and also artists outside of the faith tradition focusing on the sort of strangeness of Mormon art. But then within the Church, I see a desire for this more like mainstream kind of Christian art. So, I want to ask, are, are you seeing this as well?

Do you agree with my assessment here? Do you want to push back on any of this? Or what do you think are the trends happening right now with, with Latter-day Saint art? Emily, can I go to you first?

Emily Larsen: Sure. Yeah, I mean, I agree with you Jenny and I, and I agree with Laura. I think that you see such a wide variety. I think you [00:15:00] do see this, like Laura points out, especially in artists working in larger contemporary art circles and in, in different venues, that there is this emphasis on the strangeness and the, that exoticization.

But like you're saying, there's so much art being created that does kind of try to conform to this mainstream imagery. We, one of the other shows we host at Springville each year is an annual exhibition competition of spiritual and religious art. And it's open to any faith tradition, but of course we're in Springville, Utah. So many pieces are dealing with the Latter-day Saint faith tradition, either from a devotional aspect or from an outsider out aspect. And think what's great about these shows at Springville, where we get so many entries is you really do see this wide swath of variety and kind of anywhere along the spectrum, you'll see are.

I was talking to some other people [00:16:00] recently about in the gallery last fall for this Spiritual and Religious show. In one of the galleries, we had this very traditional depiction by Del Parson, who, that's the artist who did the very traditional portrait of Christ in the red robe that you see in the meetinghouses. So, there was a portrait of Christ by him with a young child. And then right across from this was more of an installation piece by an artist who, and I could be getting this a little bit wrong, but I think in their artist statement, identified themselves as a queer Mormon witch. And I think that speaks to the, and it was very contemporary, and it was installation based, and it was interactive. And those kind of, to me, in the same gallery in Springville showed this just the wide variety of art being made for different audiences and for different motivations in the Latter-day Saint tradition.

So that was my long rambly answer to say, yes, I agree with you, Jenny.

Jenny Champoux: Yeah. So, you kind of see this like widening divide here, that there's Yeah, I, yeah, but I think, yeah, it depends [00:17:00] on the audience, right? Of, of who they're marketing it towards. Micah, what do you think?

Micah Christensen: Oh, I've got a lot of thoughts. First of all, I read through what Laura wrote a few times and really just, I thought she was so thoughtful and she had so many thoughts that, uh, I had thought and I thought, oh, I was the only one who thought, I thought I was the only one who thought that. Right?

When I read it and then I thought, boy, you could take so many of the things she wrote and write an entire chapter or book about just one paragraph or thought that she had. I found it to be, really, really, really thoughtful and this idea that you, that, that you brought out. And you've, I agree with you.

I think that there is this, uh, this idea that there's a larger art world within that art [00:18:00] world, it's not cool to be religious in, in, in some parts of that art world. And I don't want to flatten the art world too much because there's a lot of variety in the art world, right? But she talks a little bit about that.

And, and I think what she's talking about is really the world of contemporary art. The kind of art that's really demanding most of the attention and resources in, in museums and art schools and, and, and galleries worldwide, which is, she travels quite widely. And she talks about going to the Venice, she doesn't biennale, but it's where I know she's gone to that. She's spent a lot of time in London. And those are things that I also have spent a lot of time at.

And, you know, it the, the, when I have seen LDS artists who play in that world, they do assume this kind of, it's almost like that is what makes them different, being a Latter-day Saint.

And they use that as a way to get some traction in a world where everybody [00:19:00] is trying to get some kind of identity. Right? And then there's, there, uh, she breaks down, pretty, in a fascinating way, what it was like working for the Church and the Church's concerns with the kinds of things they were collecting and what they were encouraging or not encouraging. And then I, also, I, my perspective that I think is maybe different from hers or most people's is I did my master's and PhD on how artists were trained in academic traditional art, plays very well with religious subjects in a non-cynical way. Right? It's very earnest often, and there is a Venn diagram that crosses over with Latter-day Saint artists who are working in figurative art and making very sincere images and finding an audience for it, and they see no reason to compromise what they're doing.

And a larger world that's [00:20:00] doing representational figurative artwork. But even that world, which is the Michael Angel Academy, the Daniel Graves Academy in Florence, the, the academies in New York of the Grand Central Academy where there are a lot of LDS artists go to these places. When you get to, when I've spoken at these academies in London, Spain, France, Italy. The United States, even Latin America, they all have a mentality, like some of these figurative Latter-day Saints do feel that as figurative artists working in a traditional method, the art world is against us. Which then makes them feel really cool too, right? Because then they're the young upstarts that are just like the modernists who were upstarts against the academy.

Now they're the upstarts.

Jenny Champoux: Hmm

Micah Christensen: So I, I don't know, I kind of, sometimes I'm somewhat cynical when I think, oh, Latter-day Saints have to be seen as weird, or, [00:21:00] they have to, they have, I, I think it's, it's almost like you pick your audience. Or your patron is another way of saying that. And there are the demands that are put on you limitation or opportunity, right.

Jenny Champoux: Yeah. No, that's really interesting. Because even though the figurative artists maybe right, are less, I don't know, in the majority, in the contemporary art world, they're very much in demand with our Church leadership, right, who was commissioning art, figurative art for temples, or just other gospel art. So it's like you said, and I think Laura touched on this in her essay too, that Latter-day Saint artists are trying to negotiate between these different patrons or audiences. Like the Church leaders who want didactic, figurative images, and members who want that too, who want prints of those kinds of images in their home.

And then [00:22:00] you've got the Church History Museum trying to, you know, like build a comprehensive repository of Latter-day Saint art, trying to encompass everything. And then this really expansive contemporary art market. And, and they each have different motivations, different styles that are preferred.

And, I don't know, Emily, how do you see Latter-day Saint artists negotiating those different markets?

Emily Larsen: Yeah, it's really interesting and I mean, I'm so familiar with our local and regional art scene, most familiar with that versus kind of an international or national contemporary art scene, even though I keep up on that and try to be sure I'm staying aware of what's going on. But you do see artists prioritizing, like Micah said, and like Laura really points out in the book different audiences and patrons.

And I think too, once you kind of decide what kind of art you're making as an artist and who that art is really for and what's motivating it, you cut, there's these different subcultures, even in like a [00:23:00] small of place as Utah and Salt Lake City, there's dozens of different art communities and cultures and they're all having different conversations and sometimes it overlaps and, and sometimes it doesn't.

And that's really interesting because you do see that like what's motivating the art and who the art is trying to speak to most, whether that is a, a larger contemporary art scene or, or a scene in Utah or a religious patron. It really does affect the way that the artists are making art. And, sorry, I don't know if this thought is very well formed, but, it is interesting to see where those overlaps happen and where they don't and what motivates the different artists, even just here in Utah.

Jenny Champoux: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Micah, do you see, are there places for Latter-day Saint artists that are doing religiously informed art? Are, are there places for them to market that outside of, you know, Deseret Book or Church Temple art commissions?

Micah Christensen: [00:24:00] Absolutely. I, I don't know how big it is.

Jenny Champoux: Yeah.

Micah Christensen: that, it's, it's happening. So, for instance, there's a, an international show that's called The Art Renewal Center.

So, the Art Renewal Center has this major competition every year, there's a competitor that's come up to it called the Almenara Prize that's happening in Spain. And each one of them has a lot of religious art that's sent to them, much of it by LDS artists. And it's either bought by the organizations that are putting on the competition or by people who see the artwork on the site.

And I've talked with artists, they're working for Ang, the LDS artists who were working for an Anglican commission or a Catholic commission or a commission that is, it has nothing to do with Latter-day Saint group. There was a major, one of the most beautiful installations I've ever seen of [00:25:00] sculpture and painting was done by Joseph Brickey in a church in, in Minnesota.

And it was done for a Catholic church. He worked on it for many years in collaboration with a Catholic priest. And here's Joseph Brickey, who is one of the fun, like most LDS of LDS artists. I mean, he's been around for decades doing work for temples, for church publications. And here he's got a huge commission that he was given by the Catholic Church. So I know that, I know that it's happening. Uh, and you know, I've judged art competitions in Spain and in France before, and there's always, you know, a few Latter-day Saint artists that are competing in them. I think that's, it's there. There is a small group that are doing it.

Jenny Champoux: Yeah.

Micah Christensen: I was [00:26:00] speaking to somebody who I, you know, I own, I'm one of the owners of Anthony's Fine Art in Salt Lake, and about 70% of our clients are out of the state or out of the country. And most of the religious art that I sell, that I don't have a lot of contemporary artists that are LDS that are in the gallery. It's mostly historic, but whether it's historic or contemporary religious artists, most of my art goes to non-LDS out of state buyers.

Jenny Champoux: Oh, really?

Emily Larsen: And we're working with a smaller group of collectors than Micah is, but we sell a huge variety of works each year from our Spiritual and Religious show that are all across kind of the genre spectrum, medium style, some very devotional and traditional, some very contemporary. And I think there's examples. Like I keep thinking of Camilla Stark.

She's a, a great artist based here in Provo, who works in a more contemporary style. She just did a [00:27:00] Kickstarter campaign for her graphic novel, The Desert Prophet, and it went, it was hugely successful. And so I think there are lots of people out there, religious art answers these huge questions about what it means to be human or attempts to, right, attempts to get at some of those and some of these shared experiences.

And I think there's a, a hunger for that among people. So I think there is a, a big market.

Jenny Champoux: I like that. I like that idea of thinking about these universal themes, but maybe viewed through a Latter-day Saint lens or perspective on it. Yeah.

All right. To shift gears a little bit, and looking more at artwork within Latter-day Saint culture, Laura's essay talked about how there is this limited list of approved images for meeting houses.

For listeners who may not know, probably most of you do, but in May of 2020, Church leaders announced this initiative to emphasize Jesus or images of Jesus in meeting [00:28:00] house artwork, especially in the foyers of the meetinghouse. And as part of that, if the stake president needed to select new artwork for the foyer, there is a provided list. And at the time in 2020, it was 22 images on this approved selection of foyer artwork. I've noticed over the past five years, that list has changed a little bit. Some, some pieces have been removed, some have been added. I think there are actually 23 now, but it's, it's kind of a different list than it was five years ago.

I know you're both aware of that. Without getting too much into the particulars of any, any of the paintings, which maybe we could do if you want to. But I just kind of want to take a step back a little bit and think about what's your take on the impact of having this limited scope of approved images?

Are there benefits to that? I mean, it seems like clearly there are limitations, but like, what are [00:29:00] the pros and cons here? Micah, will you start?

Micah Christensen: Oh yeah, I've got, I got a lot of thoughts on this.

Jenny Champoux: Okay.

Micah Christensen: so first of all, I think we should talk about the mechanics of this,

Jenny Champoux: Okay.

Micah Christensen: So it's, the Church is broken up into various patronages, you could say, right? So, there's the temple, which has images which are not reproduced outside of the temple. There's the Ensign and Church magazines and website, which things that they sometimes use the art for, but don't usually own the original art. They just buy a limited use or maybe a long-term use image, and they tend to be the most liberal with the kinds of images they use.

Jenny Champoux: Right.

Micah Christensen: Then you've got the Church History Museum, which is, Laura talks about, has a, she used the word edict from D&C 22 to just collect everything. Right? Not from a, just from a perspective of being good [00:30:00] stewards, of collecting what's being made right. And then there is the Church department that oversees meetinghouses, and that is what we're talking about with this particular question. And what they give, when you build a new building in the Church, usually it's given as a book to the stake president. Abook of images that the stake president, hopefully in counsel with the, like the stake leadership, including men and women.

Jenny Champoux: Right?

Micah Christensen: a decision to put what images in what building and they, they're, and then they say to the Church, these are the images I want.

And the Church out. It's, you know, it, it, it gives them whatever size they need and frames it and sends it to them. So they have this booklet that they, they've had around since the 90s.

And they chose, [00:31:00] a really important, I think to say why they chose to change it. In 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement was happening. I don't think right away, but the Church leadership, even Dallin, President Oaks, said Black Lives Matter. Right? He did use those words and there was not a lot of art that showed people of different races. Right? There's very European informed, so what the Church did in its first iteration is it took, it, it scoured their rights of what they had, that had a variety of things, and they immediately added like 10 paintings that they already owned. But then as I understand it, they've commissioned 10 or 15 more. From different artists.

And it was chaos for a little while. I remember I got a phone call, I don't know if Emily, you had anything like this, but I got this phone call, five or six different versions of it. I'll tell you the one from Oakland. So a stake [00:32:00] president and stake Relief Society president gave me a phone call, conference call, and they said, we want to change out all the art in our meetinghouses. We've been told you're somebody who knows a lot of different LDS artists. We want people to walk into our meetinghouses and to see themselves. They don't see Black people, they don't see Hispanic people, they don't see people who are of all different colors. We want those kinds of images in our place. What do you think we should do? And the Church had given the counsel of, to them, of pick your own art and if, and then we will at some point send an administrator to come in and see if it's okay. But if you, but if you picked it through a counsel system, it's gonna be very, but they we're gonna largely trust you.

They went out and bought the, they convinced Kirk [00:33:00] Richards and Rose Datoc Dall, who are not on the list, from what I understand, to make some original works and to buy the rights of other works, which they, as a stake paid for, to put in their building. And as far as I understand, the Church has not gone in and, and taken it out. But the Church was kind of panicked that everyone was gonna do this, I think

Jenny Champoux: Right, right,

Micah Christensen: it was like, it was like, oh my gosh, like if everybody's picking their own art and going directly to the artist, we better, we better like get some standardized images.

Jenny Champoux: right. Well, and that seems to be one of the benefits is you have that kind of familiar uniform visual culture throughout the world. Emily, what do you think about that? Is that, is that useful or, or are there ways that go.

Emily Larsen: oh, it's, it's incredibly useful for a certain motivation of the Church, right? Like I, I Laura's book chapter talks a lot about all the [00:34:00] different ways you can identify as LDS or more or not, and I'm definitely in that complicated, I, uh, I'm not a practicing active member though I grew up LDS and am very, obviously very in, in this culture and in this world.

So I might have maybe more of a cynical view of this than someone who was very much more of a believing devotional member. But I think there's, there's a lot of motivation for the corporate Church, right, to standardize that, for it to be uniform. That this is, these are the artworks that are going to be on display when we want our members taking part in taking the sacrament and doing these really devotional rituals each Sunday or, or when they're there for classes, they can then control the imagery that's part of that experience. And I think that's very useful when you have a church of millions of members all over the world.

But I think you, for me, there's a huge [00:35:00] con to it because I really love the things that have come out of Latter-day Saint visual culture. Out of our, our super specific and super local. We have this great piece in our collection. It's by Mabel Frazer. Heather Belnap discusses it in her chapter in this book, and it's a work of art that Mabel created for her chapel for where that her local congregation came each Sunday and took the sacrament.

And it's, it's this very strange painting of Jesus among the Nephites. I think a lot of people who see it just think it's bizarre, but it is monumental, it's, you can't even really fit it in the museum because it's so big. And that she created that for her chapel and of her understanding of this Book of Mormon's story is so much more meaningful and interesting to me as an art historian.

And even as someone who would go to worship, I would love to worship in a space that had some of that more local art. But I, [00:36:00] I think there's a lot of reasons to not do it that way. Because as Micah points out, you, you kind of let it open to anything and then it's hard to, keep it standard amongst all those different congregations.

Jenny Champoux: Yeah, I, I mean, I feel like it's a little tricky, right? Because I do see benefits to having that kind of uniform visual culture and there's just sort of a visualization of belief and doctrine that is appropriate. But then, you know, when the art is always like, when you have 23 paintings that are the only 23 paintings you see in Church foyers, I feel like over time there's a potential for it to become just kind of like background noise where you don't even, they're so familiar, you don't even really engage with them anymore as a viewer. It doesn't spark new thought or conversation or questions. And also, you know, may [00:37:00] not reflect, in our global church, it may not reflect individual experiences or, or different cultures. So I think it's, I think it's tricky. I don't know.

Micah Christensen: I feel like she, Laura, nailed in this. There are two thoughts that I want to kind of combine that she shared. The first is that she said that we're iconoclastic in the Church. As Protestants. And I want to say more about that.

But before I do, the other thought was that, I'll quote it. She says, by comparison to many other faith traditions, is still in its infancy, are at the very least in early puberty, and is awkward, naive, and still very much obsessed with policing its boundaries. Beau, I mean, brilliantly said, right? Brilliantly said. And I feel like to me, when you are half Jewish by descent, right?

And my, anytime, [00:38:00] I'm not trying to belittle the pioneer experience, but anytime somebody would get up at the pulpit and talk about how much the Mormon pioneers suffered, my Jewish grandma would be like, okay, here we go again. Suffered more than the Jews, right? And she would, she would have kind of this perspective of, you know, they're, they're young people, Micah, they've only been around for, you know, a couple hundred years of religion. We've been around for 8,000 years. That was her, that was her thinking. Whether it's, we could examine that right? As an idea. But, and, and whether or not we are glomming onto other traditions and borrowing from them and those kinds of things.

But I think Laura's point, I, I specifically to this question you're asking of, is uniformity good? It's a chicken in the egg scenario for me on some level because how do you have an identity and a uniform experience as a global church when you don't have [00:39:00] imagery that's shared by everybody, right? But at the same time, you're so young and the imagery you're creating is arguably underdeveloped, awkward, naïve. Like she said, in puberty. And so when you're creating work that's like that, do you, are you on some level stunting its growth by creating uniformity at such an early stage?

To me that's a real, it's a, it's a, it's, it's a thought that I think is, none of us can answer it until 500 years from now.

I'm not a huge fan of uniformity myself. I do not like uniformity. I am like, just everybody create whatever they want to create and, and let the best stuff win. Right?

Jenny Champoux: yeah.

Micah Christensen: and maybe the best stuff means that everything wins and just has different audiences. Right?

Jenny Champoux: Yeah. Mm-hmm. [00:40:00] Yeah.

Micah Christensen: I, I also realized that as if I were in Church leadership that I, I understand at some point you have to say. Yeah. You know, we're building a building and people come here and they, and we've got to contribute to a certain kind of experience.

Emily Larsen: I think it's interesting to think about like, how, what are the ways that the Church or, or us as a, a larger Latter-day Saint culture need to introduce people to different artists? Because maybe in meetinghouses isn't the way to show the great variety of art that's being made in our tradition or about our faith tradition.

But there's, I find people really at our visitors at the museum, they're experience is so specific to a specific artwork, and when it becomes, when it is that individual expression that relates to their own human experience, that's where that magic, transformative, spiritual experience can happen with the work of art.

And, and how do you, a kid in a [00:41:00] random chapel in in the world, how do you help them have that opportunity to find the artwork that speaks to them spiritually? I don't, I don't know if I have answer to that. And actually, Jenny, I think you have done a lot of work on that by creating the Book of Mormon Art Catalog, where you create this huge repository of art being made about a subject that people can find.

But it's, it's such an interesting and complicated question when we get down into the weeds of it.

Jenny Champoux: Thanks.

Micah Christensen: Yeah, I mean the, the, I think that something you said, Emily, I, I. Goes back to this iconoclasm and why we have to be iconoclastic on some level, on a doctrinal level know, you, when you go into these chapels and, and uh, Laura talks about this and quotes a couple others, the things that are definitely like utilitarian in uniform or you go in and it's the same chairs, the same tables, the same [00:42:00] walls everywhere you go because it's practical, right? It's super practical. And, and I think that you want people to have, we are a people who are extremely literate in the sense that, in the history of religions, most people before the Enlightenment were not very literate and they were experiencing religion through images, maybe mostly in architecture. They relied on a priest whose job it was to interpret. Right? And to read to them the text and, and then Protestantism comes along and everybody in our church is encouraged to read the words. Right?

If I had to say, like, for me as an example is like maybe a fake made up example is you a revealed, uh, a sacrament meeting prayer that has to be word for word and it's corrected if it's wrong. We would never put an image above a sacrament meeting table [00:43:00] in, in order to show it off. We would never really put an image in a celestial room either. Right? Because the whole idea is that, that it's the revealed word. It's your personal revelation, your personal experience. And an artwork is by definition someone else's vision and idea. That's their vision and idea. And the Church is at its own cross-purposes the moment they pick one artist to represent, because words can be interpreted in all kinds of ways, right? The moment you create an image that's supposed to be everybody's way of interpreting something and thinking about something, then you create a much narrower vision what those words potentially mean. And so on some level, I think the demand of religion is either, you got two ways to go. Either have no images and everybody has their own interpretation, right? Or you let every image possibly come in. So you've got tons of variety [00:44:00] interpretations everybody has got an interesting way of looking at the first vision or something else.

Or you're in this weird in between place where we've got like five official first visions and they're all a little different than one another, but they're not necessarily like, how do you depict brightness of the sun? Literally, right? Abstraction is sometimes a better way to do it, and the Church does not accept abstraction as the way to depict it.

And so you're immediately like, at cross-purposes with what art can do and what the Church will do and what the word can do.

Jenny Champoux: That's such an, that's such an interesting tension there between these different competing factors and motivations.

Okay. Switching gears again in, in the book, in the introduction to the book, written by the co-editors, they identified several themes that they saw in Latter-day Saint art, including things like, you know, self [00:45:00] fashioning through image, or notions of race and gender. I, as I've done this 10 episode series, I kind of regrouped the way they had them grouped in the book because I wanted to think about maybe additional kind of cross dialogue between these essays.

And I've really enjoyed that talking to the, the authors over the series. One that came up over and over again, I mean, there were several, but one that stood out to me was, it came up in the very first chapter by Terryl Givens, is this fluid boundary between the sacred and the profane in Latter-day Saint art.

And, I wanted to ask you both how you see that. Maybe Emily, maybe with your Spiritual and Religious show there, how, how do you see artists negotiating or like transgressing that boundary between sacred and profane? And, and then Micah, I'd love to get your take as someone who, like you said, has judged [00:46:00] religious, you know, Catholic religious competitions or European religious art. Like how does Latter-day Saint, how do Latter-day Saint approaches to this sacred and profane paradigm? How do they compare with maybe what Catholics or Europeans are doing? Is it different? Is it similar?

Emily Larsen: Yeah, I think, I think this is a huge theme in Latter-day Saint art that you see different artists approaching differently. And I mean, we already mentioned Joseph Brickey, but I think artists like him and who are really interested in sacred geometry and symbolism and, and really understanding how their visual language is tying into this spiritual symbolism and, and Christian iconography that goes back centuries.

They're on maybe one end of a spectrum that's really more in the sacred there. I would say that they consider their art sacred. And, and, and Micah maybe can push back on my interpretation of this too, but then there's a lot of artists who are playing with the [00:47:00] daily life, sacredness, spirituality, and daily life, and that's of how they're communicating their beliefs or the, the Latter-day Saint doctrine.

I think like a great example that is really popular is Brian Kershisnik’s Jesus and the Angry Babies.

Jenny Champoux: Yeah.

Emily Larsen: like the, this hugely celestial figure of Jesus Christ, a a God, part of our godhead sitting with babies he can't make happy. Like that's the, the, the daily ritual experience. And there's a lot, a lot of artists in Utah and in, in the Latter-day Saint tradition who, who express their religion and their spirituality through these daily lives and moments.

And then there's artists like, and I already mentioned her too, so sorry, I keep just repeating artists that we've already mentioned, but Camilla Stark and the Arc-hive, which is this Mormon Art Collective, who purposefully is examining these intersections of the sacred and profane. And even in kind of a, a funny way, they curated a show that I was part of [00:48:00] maybe six or seven years ago called Holy Hell.

And it was all about how do we use these symbols in our visual culture that sometimes are sacred or these sacred figures, but start to kind of play, add a playfulness to that, add a sense of humor, poke fun a little bit, and there's artists all across the spectrum doing all sorts of that.

Jenny Champoux: Fascinating. Okay. Micah, what do you think?

Micah Christensen: I think that fundamentally the Church is of two minds of this sacred and profane because I, I think that if you're Catholic, for instance, God is mysterious. There's a kind of unknowability and a lack of human understanding of what God is doing and why. And as Latter-day Saints, we've got that from the King Follett discourse.

The idea of as man, as God as man is God once was, as God is man may become. And that was seen [00:49:00] as blasphemous by a lot of religions. We know this because it was like almost on an idea of like, of God is so much different than us, it was more like you know, we're, from their perspective, we're pulling God down to our level. A little bit, right. That he's understandable. He is knowable, he's logical from our own comprehension. I'm not saying that all our, the, all the doctrine of, of, of the Church says that, but I think in our arts it's, funny because even the way we, even use paintings there, there, you know, they're, we're posing in a picture during a baptism in front of a painting where Christ is hugging children. Right? He's somebody who's like, he's your, he's your buddy. He's your friend. He's like a member of the family, right?

And, uh, it's this, this whole debate that I don't think is anything new. There's this great, [00:50:00] oh, I can't remember who it was, but it was a, was a Swedish author who comes to the United States, and he does a commentary as he's traveling across the United States in the 1970s. he says that all, the one thing that's interesting about the Mormon Christ is he looks like Bjorn Bork, which who was a famous tennis star at the time, and you've heard me talk about this before, both of you, that the Mormon depiction of God tends to track pretty closely whatever, with whatever the popular image of a perfect Hollywood star man looks like at any one time. In the eighties, he looks kinda like Sylvester Stallone and Schwarzenegger. He is big. He's got a jaw. He becomes more beautiful and Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise-like in the nineties. And now he kinda looks like a Marvel superhero. Right. And I think that not mysterious and even this discussion's about we can, he was, he, he was Semitic.

Let's make him look Semitic. [00:51:00] Let's make him look like somebody who really existed, you know, 2000 years ago. And let's get that exactly right. because we can, we can do anthropology and research and we can know exactly what Jesus looked like. These are conversations that Catholics are like, you can’t know that stuff.

I mean, it that, like, that is in and of itself a profane discussion, right? That we're bringing God down to this definable thing. And, and I, don't know. I think that it's got its pluses and minuses because we really have a relatable imagery of Christ. He's somebody you can relate to who understands us and our needs according to these images,

Jenny Champoux: Yeah.

Micah Christensen: it's also got the limitation of, it's limited by our own imagination of, you know, of what people are like. So I think Givens, it's a really profound question of, I think maybe [00:52:00] Latter-day Saints more than anybody in the shows I've judged, are more willing to make everything profane. To make it sacred.

It's like going to a Church temple department meeting that they had in like 2019 where they said, okay guys, we're gonna make images for the Church. And we've got on staff anthropologists and archeologists who can make sure that the jars you put in your paintings are accurate. As if like, we look at a work of art and say, I am so inspired by that painting. That jar is really from the first century ad. Holy cow. Right? Like, I feel the spirit so strongly because that textile is accurate, right? That to me is how I like, look at this sacred and profane discussion on some level of, I, I don't think it's a I'm, I'm not trying to like knock somebody who's got it accurately. I just [00:53:00] don't think that it's necessarily the thing that's going to make art inspiring or useful.

Jenny Champoux: That's an interesting example you give of that sort of drive for historical accuracy in biblical art. And that, I mean, that was very popular among other American and European 19th century Bible artists. Right? And, and, and Latter-day Saints, I think kind of picked that up and ran with it and have continued it in a way that, uh, a lot of other faith traditions have left off.

But maybe one of the motivations there is that, that if it looks like a first century pottery, then somehow that speaks to like the truth of Christ's life as a mortal man in, in Jerusalem. I don't know. I mean, I'm assuming that's sort of the motivation there is that it like, is this sort of truth signaling.

Micah Christensen: [00:54:00] I think that's true, and I also think it's a fight and another way against the Northern European, white Jesus. Right? Which is itself an invented image.

It's also a necessary, it's one way of battling that kind of like, we're gonna have our own Mormon Christ that's different from the Danish Carl Bloch, or the German Heinrich Hofmann Christ. So I think it's part of what Laura was talking about. It's we're kind of in our infancy and our puberty trying to figure out like, is history is, is is some anthropological answer gonna get us our own Mormon Christ? I don't know.

Jenny Champoux: Yeah.

Micah Christensen: I don't know. I mean, it is, right, too about the idea of by making it more about accuracy historically, it also maybe brings us closer to who he actually was, which [00:55:00] goes to that profane question because it's like an everyday.

Jenny Champoux: Right,

Micah Christensen: than a mysterious, symbolic figure that you would possibly see in a Catholic image.

Jenny Champoux: right. It's, it's emphasizing his mortality more than his divinity, right? He's not standing on a cloud. He's a real person

Micah Christensen: right.

Jenny Champoux: you know, in sandals standing in the dirt. Yeah. So that, that's a, yeah. Lot, lots to think about. Well, also thinking about kind of where things are headed, in the forward to the book, it was written by Richard Bushman and Glen Nelson. They talked about the book as being a launching point to inspire additional work. I mean, obviously both of you are doing amazing work in Utah and LDS adjacent spaces and there's so much more going on out there. And I just wanted to ask you both as, as curators and scholars, what, [00:56:00] what other themes do you think need to be explored or what are, what kind of work needs to be most urgently done to fill in the gaps of Latter-day Saint visual culture history?

Emily, do you wanna start us off?

Emily Larsen: Yeah. You know, I think great the more that gets published. I think, I don't have a specific, like I wanna see this book. I mean, there's a million books that I tell people all the time, like, I'm really excited Vern’s John Hafen books coming out. And Heather Belnap and I eventually will finish our book on Mormon Women art or Utah women artists, which a lot of them are Mormon.

And there's, I know of all these projects and I feel like there's still so little done that at this point it's kind of like, do anything! Start with like, keep adding to our conversation on Latter-day Saint art and visual culture. Because I think what, what I actually think what it really means with this book is a great launching point, is more conversations between scholarship. [00:57:00] Like there's a lot of like, oh, someone's written about this and someone's written about this, but where are people kind of arguing scholarly in an academic conversation about some of these things? I think that's where we'll start to get really fruitful scholarship when there's enough of us writing about it that we're actually starting to debate with one another in the scholarship.

Jenny Champoux: Oh, I like that. Yeah. That, that sounds good. Yeah. Micah, what about you? What, what do you see? How can we bring a more complete picture to this history?

Micah Christensen: I, I think we're living at a time when we're getting away from being just official images and there's a lot of things happening in, in the private market. You see people like Kirk Richards who's got his JKR Gallery, and you've got Esther Candari. You've got the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. You’ve got a lot of [00:58:00] different people who all bring their own audiences and their own perspective are, they've got very different tastes than, than the Church does. There's some crossover with some. But I, I just kind of, I kinda feel like we're at the precipice of, it's, the Church is no longer gonna be the one who may be, and it's exciting, who's commissioning all the great works of art. Right? Or, or the ones that are the most remembered potentially. Right? We may be entering a time when, maybe there are private chapels or private homes or things like that, who knows? Right? And I think that if I were, if I were writing about this right now, I'd want to be talking with collectors and what they're after, right?

That, and, and I would want to talk with artists who are kind of on the margin of deliberately chosen to continue making day art, but that isn't, is deliberately [00:59:00] not for the Church as a patron.

I think that that world to me is, is kinda like the jazz that's going on.

Jenny Champoux: Yeah. Nice. Yeah. You know, when I, Emily mentioned my Book of Mormon Art Catalog website, and that project really started when I was writing a sort of scholarly history of images of Lehi's dream from 1 Nephi 8 in the Book of Mormon. And I wanted to kind of see how, how artists had responded to that chapter of scripture and what had changed over time or what, what parts of that chapter were emphasized more than others in the art.

And even how artists from different countries maybe were interpreting it differently. And so I started trying to gather just images of Lehi's dream and it partly made me feel like there [01:00:00] just, there needs to be a better repository for Latter-day Saint art. Especially art based on the scriptures to show, if we want to do scholarship on Latter-day Saint art, we need to have, right, the primary sources to, to look at it. And, so yeah, so I started, that's what started the whole Book of Mormon Art Catalog. And now we have I think like 250 Lehi's dream artworks in there and over 12,000 artworks cataloged in there total. And there's just, there's so much out there and, like Emily said, I mean, just do anything, right?

There's so much to be done in terms of the scholarship and the contextualization and helping, not just art historians or scholars, but also just members of the Church, understand their history better, understand how to look at art, how to engage with it, how to ask questions of it, and how to use it as a [01:01:00] helpful, study tool as, as they read the scriptures and study the doctrine.

So, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I, I, so I don't know that I have one answer of like, what's the biggest gap in the history, if it is, like Emily said, just, just get to work everybody. Like there's, there's work to be done. Yeah.

Okay. So I'm ending every episode by asking our guests to share a particular artwork that is meaningful to you.

Emily Larsen: One that I love is the one I already talked about this Mabel Frazer painting in our collection. And the other one that I've been thinking about as I've been mulling around this question is we just have this great self-portrait by Gary Ernest Smith in our collection.

And I think actually Menachem Wecker talks about it in his chapter on the Mormon Art and Belief. But it's kind of this, it's a very dark, in some ways self-portrait. It's the moment I think it's even called Decision. But, as Gary Ernest Smith, who was one of the founding members of the Mormon Art and Belief Movement was, was [01:02:00] deciding to convert to the Latter-day Saint faith and this moment of decision.

And you kinda see him very and in, in deep thought in the foreground. And then behind him are like these kind of two pathways that it's very, kind of a psychological self-portrait. And I think. To me that is the, the great thing about almost all religious art and all art, but especially Latter-day Saint art is like, it is all these very individual human experiences and spiritual experiences and spiritual decisions.

And that's one of the great things about Latter-day Saint art and doctrine is there's such an emphasis on personal revelation and your own experience. And I, I think that self-portrait captures that, that moment of doubt and of belief and the tension between the two and what way are you gonna go and how will spirituality in your life.

So that's one of my favorites.

Jenny Champoux: Yeah, that's a really, that's a really powerful piece. Yeah, it really does capture all those emotions. Thanks. Micah, what about you?

Micah Christensen: So the piece that [01:03:00] I'm thinking of is by Walter Rane. It's an oil painting that he did that, uh, I think it's called. Oh my gosh. I'll have to look it up. It may, the theme of it is resurrection.

Jenny Champoux: Okay.

Micah Christensen: It has a woman who is clearly holding a man who has, who is kind of being carried by the woman.

And I asked Walter how he came up with it and, and what the theme was. Because I think the title isn't clearly about resurrection.

He said, Micah, and if you've met Walter, he's a very soft spoken person, but he has a lot of original thinking and he does a lot of official images for the Church.

And he said, Micah, this is not official doctrine. Okay. He said, but if women have a role in bringing life to and, and giving birth, don't you think they have a role in resurrection [01:04:00] and it's their job to resurrect people? And it, it, it blew my mind. Because you know, there's, there's occasionally you see these lists go around by Church officials who are trying to commission works and they're going through the scriptures and they're trying to come up with, oh, do we have that one of the prophet talking to the donkey?

Or do we, do we have this one? Like we, we've got like so many of Christ talking to the Samarian woman, but we only have one of this particular image. Right? And it's like they're going by text that's literal. Walter, he was coming up with something that's not on any list. It's a, it's something that is an exploration that only art could possibly do.

Jenny Champoux: Right.

Micah Christensen: And I, to me that is the kind of art I wanna see more of. I want to see something that's not, it's not rebellious in its [01:05:00] nature. It's not disrespectful to anyone. It's maybe not doctrinal either. Right? But it's, but it's an exploration of a thought that makes me a little emotional, you know, to think about that piece.

Jenny Champoux: Oh, that's a beautiful example of how a member of the Church is using the medium of art to, yeah, to explore their own beliefs and theology. Yeah. I like that. I'm gonna look that one up. Thank you.

Micah Christensen: Yeah.

Jenny Champoux: I don't know that I want the job of resurrecting people, though.

Micah Christensen: Yeah. I, uh, I don't know either. And can you choose whether or not to do it? You're like, yeah, I don't know if I want to do that guy.

Jenny Champoux: Yeah. It's like, well, how long has it been? I don't know. We'll see.

Micah Christensen: Yeah.

Jenny Champoux: Well, Emily and Micah, it was so great to talk with you both today. Thank you.

Micah Christensen: [01:06:00] It was a privilege. Thanks for having us. Real honor to be picked.

Jenny Champoux: For our listeners, thanks for being with us throughout this series. I hope you've enjoyed these discussions as much as I have, and that they've inspired you to look carefully at art and to learn more about Latter-day Saint visual culture. I believe there are exciting things ahead, so please keep exploring and keep looking at art.

Thanks for tuning in. Thank you for listening to Latter-day Saint Art a Wayfare Magazine limited series podcast. Each guest is a contributor to the new book, Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader from Oxford University Press and the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. I hope you'll order a copy of the book to read the full essays and see all the gorgeous full-color images of the artwork.

You can learn more about the book and other projects at the Center's website at centerforlatterdaysaintarts.org. If you enjoyed this interview, be sure to listen to the other episodes in this series. You can subscribe to Wayfare [01:07:00] Magazine at wayfaremagazine.org. And thanks to our sponsor, Faith Matters, an organization that promotes an expansive view of the Restored gospel.

If you'd like to learn more about Latter-day Saint art, check out my other podcast, Behold: Conversations on Book of Mormon Art. You can also learn more at my website, the Book of Mormon Art Catalog. With more than 11,000 artworks, it's the largest public digital database of Latter-day Saint art. You can search by scripture reference topic, artist, country, year and more.

And we recently added a new section for art based on Church history, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. The website is bookofmormonartcatalog.org. Check it out and see what exciting new art you can find to enrich your study.

Jennifer Champoux is the founder and director of the Book of Mormon Art Catalog. She wrote C. C. A. Christensen: A Mormon Visionary (University of Illinois Press, forthcoming) and co-edited Approaching the Tree: Interpreting 1 Nephi 8 (Maxwell Institute, 2023).

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