Can Christ be Cambodian?: What the International Art Competition of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Signals about (De)centralization

In March 2019, in Salt Lake City, the winners of the Eleventh International Art Competition (IAC) were announced. Sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the IAC exists in part to enable the Church History Museum to identify and acquire the best Latter-day Saint art being produced around the world. For the eleventh time since 1987, art produced by Latter-day Saints from around the world was displayed at church headquarters, where the best pieces remain in the permanent collection. Does that signify centralization or decentralization of the faith?We propose a complex answer informed by Terryl Givens. “Some of the most productive stimulants” of artistic expression, Givens claimed, “are the unresolved tensions inherent in a culture. . .internal tensions that never manage to find full and satisfactory resolution.”1 The IAC has been an extremely productive stimulant of art that now belongs to the Church. The IAC has simultaneously expanded the canon of acceptable art that is signifying and reshaping what it means to believers to belong to the Church.The IAC began in the mid-1980s, when art-loving, philanthropic Saints Mary Lois and Jack Wheatley approached Glen Leonard, director of the church's Church History Museum, and Richard Oman, curator of acquisitions. They discussed how best to encourage artists to create works that celebrated their “Mormonness.” They hatched the idea of a church-wide competition, open to Latter-day Saints throughout the world. The Wheatleys provided substantial cash prizes, merit awards, and $30,000 more to purchase pieces for the Museum's collection. Next, the challenges of publicizing and judging the competition needed to be dealt with.2Museum staff addressed the publicity problem by listing all the Latter-day Saint artists they knew about, more than 2,500. They sent entry forms to each of them. They sent entry forms to every stake president in the English-speaking world “because the forms were in English.” They sent about five thousand invitations total—to museums and galleries where Latter-day Saint artists might see them, to university art departments, and to Institutes of Religion near them. They spread the word through the Church's periodicals, realizing that they could not reach most international Saints and, therefore, not expecting much response from them.3More than six hundred artists submitted slides or photographs of 1,031 entries in the summer of 1987. The entries came from across the U.S. and from the Philippines, Japan, Tonga, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Canada, England, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. “The non-Utah response was much bigger than we expected,” reported Leonard and Oman, who turned to the problem of judging the competition.4They did most of the work themselves based on the criteria of subject and aesthetic quality. Some pieces were not Latter-day Saint enough to make the cut, but Leonard and Oman said they were amazed at how many artists “hit it in unique ways that we had never seen before or even imagined.” They said that when they saw these pieces, “there was a flash of recognition that comes when you meet a fellow Latter-day Saint.” It was obvious that that subject, not style or technique, was the common denominator of the competition. In their words, it was “the ‘Mormonness’ of this exhibition that unifies us across vast seas of cultural diversity.”5They judged about a quarter of the entries to be worthy of further review and asked the artists to send the actual works to Salt Lake City. They chose 175 pieces out of that pool for exhibition at the museum. Twenty-three of them were from outside the United States, representing fourteen countries. From this pool they selected finalists and the winners of purchase awards.An American surgeon won first prize. European painter Pino Drago won second prize. His portrait juxtaposed Joseph Smith with an Italian philosopher (and with Smith's conflicted self) as he contemplated on June 24, 1844, whether to go to Carthage, Illinois, to face charges and (informed viewers understand) death.In 2005, a robust debate about (de)centralization marked the conference at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., commemorating Joseph Smith's two hundredth birthday. Some of the speakers addressed the topic, “Joseph Smith and the making of a global religion.” British anthropologist of religion and Anglican priest Douglas Davies was one of them. “One factor that might militate against Mormonism being identified as a world religion,” Davies said, “lies in the way a centralized leadership could wish to control any diversity that might be viewed as dissent.”Another constraint, Davies argued, lay in what he called the “American-Mormon bond.” Global religions had, by his definition, “largely broken their bond of origin and become enculturated in many different societies.” He thought that any religion with global aspirations would have to “develop from its original cultural source by engaging creatively with the cultures into which it expands and, in the process, generate diversifying textual, symbolic, and historical traditions.”6The American Roger Keller, a Latter-day Saint professor of Church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University and formerly a Presbyterian minister, responded to Davies. He rejected the argument that “if Latter-day Saints wish to become a true world religion, they must become like his decentralized, diverse models.” Keller predicted the Church would continue to wrestle with “what was essential to the gospel message and what was merely American culture that did not need to be exported.” And he predicted increasing cultural diversity among Latter-day Saints around the globe. He was sure, however, contra Davies, that the Church would become a world religion because of its “central authority and cohesion.”7Davies had a long, skeptical view, informed by the Anglican past and a shrinking British empire on which the sun was setting. Keller saw optimistically through can-do American Mormon eyes. “We will maintain structure, order, and unity in doctrine and organization while at the same time permitting regional and cultural diversity,” he predicted. He could foresee a day when Latter-day Saint hymnals around the globe would be the same and different, including “traditional hymns of the Restoration” and yet varying by culture.8The IAC supports Keller's arguments. In the words of curator Laura Allred Hurtado, it “encourages the creation of quality art by Latter-day Saints; showcases the breadth and diversity of Latter-day Saint cultural production made manifest through various styles, techniques, media, and voices; and expands the art canon from the familiar images that currently adorn the halls of ward buildings to include new approaches to depicting gospel principles.”9That was evident at the March 2019 awards ceremony. Anticipation filled the Assembly Hall on Temple Square before the awards were announced. Artists from around the world had responded to the theme Meditations on Belief “in distinct, thoughtful, and personal ways.”10 A diverse yet kindred mass of people filled the seats, united by faith and by art. Three of the five judges—one British, one South African, and one American—spoke briefly and then took turns announcing the awards. The judges had chosen just ten pieces for cash merit awards. Fifteen purchase awards were granted by the Museum acquisition team with the intention of shifting away “from a centralized model to one that expansively captures new voices, expands our cultural legacy, and redefines our visual heritage.”11After the award announcements, the crowd crossed the street to the Museum to view the entire exhibit. Exhibition space had been hard won. The judges chose 151 pieces to display out of the 956 that had been submitted from 26 countries. The paintings, woodcuts, photographs, sculptures, and textiles on display “were made by artists from Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Ghana, Hong Kong, Japan, Malawi, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Uruguay.”12 Each artist provided a statement.South African judge Herman du Toit said, “the most poignant thing about my viewing experience was reading the artists’ statements. . . . I got totally absorbed.” He explained that his first impression of a rural landscape painting was “careful” and “a good study,” but the artist's statement revealed how the painting told the restored gospel's story of transcending death.13 Douglas Davies has repeatedly argued that the genius of the gospel restored by Joseph Smith was found in the story it provided people for death conquest.14As du Toit read nearly a thousand statements along with the art, he concluded, “this was a form in which they could express their deepest understandings and alignments with the restored gospel. This is where they could express their understanding of the atonement and of Christ's role in the plan of salvation for them.”15 That was our sense, too, as we toured the exhibit. Each artist expressed a desire to share their belief. On every wall hung evidence that artists from around the globe wanted their works to be displayed and appreciated at headquarters. Analysis of a few representative works from the exhibit evidence our claims that the IAC has stimulated the creation of art that now belongs to the Church and, further, has enlarged the boundaries of what it means to believers to belong to the Church.In 2017, French artist Marie-France Bernadette Guigny painted “Let's Go Up to the Eternal Mountain That Teaches Us Its Ways” to celebrate the opening of the Paris temple. The oil on linen work “draws a parallel between entering the temple and coming unto Christ.” Viewers see from the perspective of the people, all colorfully clothed, who are ascending into the temple. Christ stands behind the temple, welcoming them with outstretched arms. “He holds the key to salvation and waits for us.”16Argentinian artist Silvana Alvarez Rhodes painted “The Power of the Lamb of God Will Set Us Free” using oil on graffito canvas. “Made from built-up earth and gold tones,” the monochromatic painting “depicts the captivity and deliverance of the children of Israel from Egypt.” The artist created the texture and imagery by building up the painting, then reduced repeatedly. “In the creative process appear tones and shapes,” she said, “I take out and incorporate those that I feel. Thus arises, from the sum of the lost spoils, the final work.”17Julie Yuen Him of Hong Kong created a Chinese paper cutting titled “The Plan of Salvation.” The circular work centers on the purposeful Creation and, as it spirals, it tells the sacred story of “the Fall, Adam and Eve offering sacrifice, Abraham sacrificing Isaac, Jesus's birth, Christ praying in Gethsemane, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection.” The story then shifts to the personal, telling the story of a convert “who has faith in Jesus Christ, repents, is baptized, receives the Holy Ghost, marries, raises a family, and endures to the end.” An outer ring of arches surrounds the whole, and outside that is a more ornate ring adorned with arches filled alternately with the sun, moon, and stars. It's an elaborate and evocative work unlike anything hanging in a Latter-day Saint chapel today.18 Yet, to use Oman and Leonard's adjective for the pieces submitted to the first IAC in 1987, Yim's “Plan of Salvation” radiates “Mormonness.”19Similarly, Chinese artist Chu Chu's digital painting “The Visit” is both Chinese and Latter-day Saint folk art. Bold colors and simple lines depict missionaries, one of them blond, sitting to eat with a family in rural China. The missionaries are teaching about Christ. “The fish on the table points to Christ, and the upside down characters on the open doors say blessing.” The home represents the home of Chu's grandparents.20In “My Faith,” artist Kwani Povi Winder of the United States painted her mother, a Santa Clara Pueblo American Indian, as the wife of King Lamoni in the Book of Mormon. “While her husband lay seemingly dead,” Winder explained, “the queen chose to believe the words of Ammon. Her example of faith was not only seen in her words but also witnessed by her actions.” To Winder, her mother's faith mirrored the queen's.21In “Male and Female Created He Them,” Nigerian artist Richard Lasisi Olagunju threaded coral beads on a board “using the African Yoruba style.” The stylized Adam and Eve are in “vivid colors, bold lines, and complicated patterns.” It could represent many themes, but to the artist it is about “essential eternal principles of marriage.”22 It reminds us of the way Oman and Leonard described the submissions to the first competition as evoking the restored gospel “in unique ways that we had never seen before or even imagined,” creating an “exhibition that unifies us across vast seas of cultural diversity.”23These pieces represent centralization of the faith. It is the explicit “Mormonness” of each piece that groups them in the exhibition.24 The works also signal decentralization. They “showcase the breath and diversity of Latter-day Saint culture and they manifest through various styles, techniques, mediums, and voices an expanding canon” beyond the “familiar images that adorn the halls of ward buildings.” Curator Laura Allred Hurtado said the IAC invites “new approaches to gospel principles and ultimately. . .adds new voices into our cultural legacy, into our visual heritage.”25 Over the years, the IAC exhibits have supported Roger Keller's argument that Latter-day Saint globalization, institutionally speaking, is a marriage that links “structure, order, and unity” with “regional and cultural diversity.”26 The unresolved tension in that marriage is extremely creative.27During her tenure as curator, Hurtado cultivated diversity and creativity. She was reluctant to throw the competition's door wide open to any submission. If the only qualifications for submission are Mormon and art, “you get a ton of really bad stuff,” she said. But on the other hand, the pool of artists has to be grown. “Try googling ‘Mormon contemporary art’ or even ‘Mormon Artists’,” she said, and the results will be limited to “the same artists that are known, or produced, or promoted via the corporation.” She saw her job, therefore, as requiring that she described as both and on the to acquire one of work by a Latter-day Saint artist every She the IAC to that painter submitted “The to the Hurtado not only but she also a New had been to the made in his the Church to the paintings, they were for Some of them have spread beyond the Museum exhibit in which they were been in and in that was to signify a with the that one Hurtado said, are to Mormon visual culture to a style that is different, from a the of a new exhibit from the Church History Museum to of the Book of Mormon. at the church's lay and with their gospel the exhibit pieces the via the in the of by the of in the of Mormon but an International pieces were to the familiar of the while creating a new the problem of The IAC has with artists who to the Museum in Salt Lake City. “In really not you Hurtado but she and have for artists to use the church to them to their pieces for That much of the but for artists the is and the to is this for the first Hurtado said, did a to the of art to the Hurtado said, is the message out to who could be The competition a few had two submissions from were good enough for the second of and that that they be sent to Salt Lake City. one of them in time to be in the exhibit. Hurtado judged the other one worthy of a purchase award it now in the Church's permanent collection. The story of its artist and how her painting got into the Church's our was with her and in in She was and was to her family by what she painting of She had just won a she of the the of she had a desire to a But was a in her with other her and she her desire in the face of that she a in an international art and American missionaries, were the who told about the IAC and her to They had of the IAC with in the Church History was to the art in the more about that just it from a artist who is about the Church's international art competition, to you in with Laura Hurtado and work with the via They the artist to his painting, and they the she needed to for the IAC as But it took time for her to to and more time to what to She on a of children a Christ. the children of who each one of them and them into His outstretched arms. They to Him and around The children represent he is for them, the two children from Christ are while the to signify how the is since the restored gospel in “The artist chose the colors of and because they for with and of the to Hurtado, the got into the IAC “because were on the people in with I had a conference and them through how to and where to said Hurtado us through the process and sent us the that we needed in to take the painting when it was She said they it to the in and as they it and said a few that it would get painting at the Museum in Salt Lake in good but to be in the IAC exhibit. Hurtado it a purchase She said it it is whether the Latter-day Saint Christ be the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Douglas that leadership could wish to control any diversity that might be viewed as Church have not to the that because the Church has broken what Davies called the “American-Mormon it from its original cultural source by engaging creatively with the cultures into which it expands and, in the process, diversifying textual, symbolic, and historical painting and that that creative is evidence from the IAC that Roger Keller was more than Davies, Keller predicted increasing cultural diversity among Latter-day Saints around the globe. He was sure, contra Davies, that as the Church expanded it would maintain its “central authority and and were on the in the art created by Latter-day Saints with its and to to the of the artists and of the is unresolved tension in the it has at been A statement of its that the is and the breadth of Latter-day Saint and to the Church History Museum art to be expanding “the art canon from the familiar images that currently adorn the halls of ward buildings to include new approaches to depicting gospel IAC is a way of of the best Latter-day Saint art from around the which the of centralized “structure, order, and unity in doctrine and The best art submitted to the IAC belongs to the Church. It at the Museum in Salt Lake City. But from it is in and of which get to Latter-day Saints all the and expanding the canon of acceptable art. That work has a like Christ and Christ what it means to belong to the Church.

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