Museum Exhibits on Display in Virtual Galleries

Through the Internet, visitors around the world can view exhibits at the Museum of Church History and Art on-line at a new museum Web site.

Located at www.lds.org/museum, the on-line virtual galleries feature current and permanent exhibits on display at the museum in Salt Lake City. The Web site also provides information about upcoming exhibits and the international art competition.

“The primary reason we are doing this is to reach out to the members of the Church worldwide, most of whom will never visit the museum in Salt Lake,” says Steven Olsen, manager of operations for the Museum of Church History and Art. The museum collects and displays Latter-day Saint art and artifacts from around the world.

Exhibits currently available online include “Early Images of Historic Nauvoo.” Visitors to the virtual gallery can click through 19th-century paintings, engravings, photographs, and drawings that feature the temple and surrounding city. “The exhibit features historical images of the Nauvoo Temple that helped architects reconstruct the temple,” says exhibit curator Richard G. Oman.

Also on-line is an exhibit called “Sutcliffe Maudsley: Nauvoo Portrait Artist.” Brother Maudsley, an 1842 British immigrant and textile worker by trade, painted from life some of the only known images of the Prophet Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

The Web site also features past winners of the museum’s international art competitions, in which artists from around the world creatively portray their views of gospel subjects. Winning pieces include a painted clay sculpture of Book of Mormon stories, a fired ceramic depiction of the Last Supper, oil paintings of parents and children, and a cut crystal temple. In March 2003 the site will feature the winners of the Sixth International Art Competition, which closes to entrants in November 2002.

The site is available primarily in English, with significant portions available in French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.