Jenny Champoux: Hi everyone, and welcome back to Latter-day Saint Art, a limited series podcast from Wayfare Magazine. I'm your host, Jenny Champoux. In Latter-day Saint Art I'll guide you through an examination of the artistic tradition of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 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.
If you're watching the video at home, you'll see that I'm holding up a copy of the book with the beautiful cover art by Jorge Cocco. I'm also posting a video and transcript of each episode along with images of the artworks discussed at WayfareMagazine.org.
In today's episode, we'll look at the history of Latter-day Saint temple art and architecture. We'll ask, how does design affect, experience and mood? Hearkening back to our discussion about the sacred and profane with Terryl Givens in our first episode, we'll think about [00:01:00] the ways material and spiritual boundaries are blurred in the built environment of the temple. We'll also learn about recent changes in temple design and interior decoration, and what this tells us about how the Church is responding to a growing and increasingly international membership.
Our guest today is Josh Probert.
Josh Edward Probert is a historian and historic design consultant who specializes in the material culture of 19th century domestic and religious life. He is a historic interiors consultant to the Church on the renovation of five of the Church's oldest temples. A graduate of the program in Religion and the Arts at Yale Divinity School and Institute of Sacred Music, he earned a PhD from the University of Delaware in cooperation with the Winterthur Museum. His chapter in the new art book is, “Latter-day Saint Temple Design: Aspirations of Grandeur and Tempering Restraints.”
Colleen [00:02:00] McDannell is unable to join us today, but her chapter in the book nicely parallels many of the topics that Josh covers. So, we'll also be looking at her chapter titled, “Temple Art Renewal, 2000 to 2022.” Colleen McDannell is a professor of history and the Sterling M. McMurrin Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she's a specialist in American religions. In 2019, her book, Sister Saints: Mormon Women Since the End of Polygamy, won an award given by the Organization of American Historians.
These chapters were both really interesting to me, and I like that we're going to get a chance to talk a little bit about Latter-day Saint architecture today. So, let's jump in.
Josh. Thanks for talking with us today.
Josh Probert: Thank you for having me.
Jenny Champoux: Your chapter and Colleen's chapter complemented each other so well with their analysis of Latter-day Saint temple art and architecture. I really appreciated the [00:03:00] ways you each highlighted the evolution of these sacred spaces. Before we get into more recent developments, I liked that in your chapter you explained some of the early history of Latter-day Saint temple building and use, which is a little different than how we think about it today.
Can you tell us more about that early history?
Josh Probert: Sure. Joseph Smith and his family, Brigham Young, his family, Hebrew, Kimball, all the, this group of early actors in the Church grew up in this long shadow of Protestant architecture, since the Reformation. And then the, you know, immigration to the New World, you know, British North America, French North America, all these colonies, right? Their minds, the cultural universes which they inhabited, of the idea of a religious meeting house [00:04:00] influences the way that early LDS temple architecture is realized. And so, we know that the early Church met in, you know, people's houses, things like that. They didn't, you know, build what we today call a church or a, or what Protestants would've called a meetinghouse.
And then Joseph Smith receives a revelation to build a temple in Missouri, in Independence, Missouri, that is never realized. But they take those plans and, uh, they're modified slightly in some ways executed in Kirtland, Ohio. And so that temple in many ways is a Protestant meetinghouse. It doesn't have endowment rooms because the endowment room hadn't been introduced yet, you know?
And so you think of just two preaching halls stuck on top of each other, [00:05:00] and with the architecture drawing largely from contemporary builders’ guides. In this case, a very popular builder named Asher Benjamin, who wrote a design guide that you can go in the Kirtland Temple and just go, oh, there's that window surround, there's that door surround, there's that Greek key design, right? And, and see where they're drawing from. And the same thing happens in Nauvoo is that there are these two meetinghouses stacked on top of each other basically, and that is the design intent for the temples through the late Utah period, Manti, Salt Lake, St. George and Logan. And that's why they're masked like that with a long fenestration of tall, you know, windows because they're originally supposed to be two meetinghouses or two, you know, let's call them assembly rooms. Sorry, not too meetinghouses stacked on each other.
What [00:06:00] happens is that, as you know, the endowment is performed in the attic of the Nauvoo Temple. In St. George, it's performed in the basement. And in mid-construction of the building of the Logan Temple, the architect there in consultation with John Taylor, decides to introduce endowment rooms into the temple. And they change the first floor construction of the temple that's mid-construction and put in endowment rooms, but you still have the vestige of the two assembly rooms with the upper assembly room. And so, they changed the floor plans for the Manti Temple, for the Salt Lake Temple accordingly as well. So, you have that Protestant meeting house interior carrying all the way up through the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple. And then it pops up again in, you know, Los Angeles and DC. They put an assembly room upstairs. But by the time you get the Cardston Temple and the Hawaii temple and the Mesa Temple, they don't have that assembly room anymore.
Jenny Champoux: [00:07:00] Okay, so that's an interesting evolution of the kind of functional spaces in there that changed some of the design. I also liked how you and Colleen both considered the ways in which that material environment contributes to a certain kind of feeling. Intentionally. And I wondered, does art, you know, framed art, does it play a role in creating that kind of feeling of peace or refuge in the temple? And does art in the temple ever have other functions? Is it ever used to teach or to provoke additional thought, or is it just meant to sort of be restful?
Josh Probert: Right, right. Well, you know, the question of framed art, is a nest is, is part of a nested, you know, like a Russian nested doll of the broad, a larger question that your [00:08:00] question, it really taps into this question of the role of the built environment writ large. And what, why built a built environment?
What, what is the goal of enlisting material objects for religious purposes? You know, many of Joseph Smith's contemporaries, romantics of letters, of poetry, whatever, would say that God is in nature, right? And they have this, a lot of them have an impulse to look to God in nature. One could ask, “Well, why not do the endowment outside? Why not do baptisms outside baptisms for the dead outside like they did for the living?” Right? And so this is one of the unique things that Joseph Smith contributes or introduces that when he receives the revelation about [00:09:00] baptism for the dead it said, this ordinance belongeth to mine house. And then he says, we need to build a temple so that we can do these ordinances. Now in exigent circumstances, there were times when the endowment was given in other places and baptism. So, and, and that's all, you know, scriptural too, that, you know, but the, it's kind of like President Oaks’ talk, “Good, Better, Best,” like for the best. You know, the ideal that the scriptures layout is a building. And so, okay, well that building then, what is its purpose, right? And, and it's this idea of, of demarcating sacred space, creating holy space something Protestants didn't believe in, in the same way that early Mormons did or do today, or Catholics do.
Right? Then the question is what, you know, what does that do? The [00:10:00] bottom line I think for me is Joseph Smith thought of the material environment metaphorically, that it, it was a metaphor for the grandeur of God, for the importance of the ordinances that just, you know, that he can see, like in Lucy Mack Smith's reminiscence, right?
She talks about this meeting in Kirtland where some said we're gonna build a temple of the Lord out of logs. And she and Joseph Smith says, no, I'll show you a better way. Right? And so, I don't know, you know, all the historicity of that account, she's writing it years later. But the point is right, that you know that he's saying he wants to do something, grander. So now your question about the painting or a framed artwork, they do both that, that that paintings can be didactic. They teach scriptural lessons. They can represent, like the Church today would like to have represent more, it's worldwide diversity in its art. Local landscapes, [00:11:00] right? It's a way of bringing familiarity and localizing the, you know, religion and those places.
And, but there's also, art is always caught up in discourses of taste. And, and therefore, good taste. Bad taste. Who gets to decide who has good taste? Who has bad taste, right? So, it's a moving target. And so that's why somebody that did the temple art in the eighties, it's all been changed. History doesn't, won't end in 50 years. And in a hundred years, people will look back at what we say, “Perfect. Don't change it, it's perfect.” They'll be like, whoa, like that old 2020, whatever art. My guess is anyway. Now not all of it, but the likely something will change, right?
And then you mentioned the idea of repose or rest.
Jenny Champoux: [00:12:00] Yeah.
Josh Probert: I think that's a, that's a more contemporary interpretation of temples. My sense is in the 19th century, people viewed, especially like the old temples, Kirtland was a multipurpose use building. But in the Salt Lake Temple, we have record of Wilford Woodruff having his birthday party in the Salt Lake Temple. We have meetings of kinds going on, and I, my sense is that people saw it more as work, as doing the ordinance work, more than a, a quiet, you know, place. Because that, that history of, I don't know it all, but other people know better than I during David O. McKay's administration and that reverence culture really became more, dominant.
Jenny Champoux: Yeah, that's interesting. I, that makes me think of just a family anecdote with the Manti Temple. So [00:13:00] My great-grandfather was the president of the Manti Temple in the 1930s, uh, James Petersen. And he, his health was not good. He was from Richfield, Utah, nearby, and, he, yeah, he really, to do the job, couldn't really travel back and forth from Manti to Richfield every day.
So, he actually moved into the Manti Temple with his wife Lou, and they lived in, I, we think the room that is now that blue endowment room that had been
Josh Probert: Well, it's, it's a blue sealing room
Jenny Champoux: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Blue sealing room, and I think maybe at one time had been an office for the Temple president.
Josh Probert: An an apartment.
Jenny Champoux: And yeah, so he, I mean he actually lived there and, I have a, we have a photo of my great-grandmother, Lou, on that spiral staircase right outside that [00:14:00] room, bringing up his lunch. You know, she'd go downstairs, get his lunch together and bring it up that spiral staircase for him.
Josh Probert: right.
Jenny Champoux: And I think that's a really interesting collapse of the sacred space but also just this sort of embodied lived experience of these saints. Making it both, right?
Josh Probert: Yeah. Yeah. I think that story, what you tell it, it evidences the increased specialization of buildings in the church. That if you think of the Kirtland Temple as having church offices, a high school, a meeting place, they do sacred ordinances here as well in the offices. Then in Utah when you get, you get tabernacles for meeting places.
So now you have a tabernacle of what you mean at, and not in the temple in the same way. [00:15:00] Right. And then as the century progresses, they get meetinghouses more. There were some earlier, early ones, I wonder. Like, just rare though. But now meetinghouses and then you have now, for example, in the Salt Lake Temple, there were rooms, meeting rooms, for high councils of the Salt Lake stakes there and now they don't need those.
They don't need, they have their own Stake Centers and they have their own meeting places. Right. And so there's an, so what's happened is, the temples have become more focused on what, on, on the ordinances that the revelations say can only be performed in them.
Jenny Champoux: Right. So more of a specialized space, right.
Josh Probert: Yeah.
Jenny Champoux: As, as you were talking, I also, about the art. I also thought, we should bring up art that wasn't framed and hung on the wall, but that was actually painted directly onto the wall with some of these early murals in Manti, St. George, Salt Lake.
Josh Probert: yeah,
Jenny Champoux: Can you tell us a little bit [00:16:00] about that history?
Josh Probert: Sure, This comes back to my comment earlier about Joseph Smith. Creating a built environment frame the rituals that he imbued with priesthood, salvific power, and, for him, the revolution is that in a Protestant meetinghouse situation, if you go to, if you would've gone to a Baptist church, a Methodist church, right? You go and you listen to the preached word of God.
Jenny Champoux: Okay.
Josh Probert: It, it's a passive experience largely. They would do the Lord's Supper, but it's a largely passive experience. For the endowment, the way Joseph Smith envisioned it and framed it, and that it was enacted in 19th century Utah and continues to, you know, different permutations, is that it was an immersive, participatory ritual [00:17:00] in which the liturgants reenacted themselves as Adam and Eve going through mortality. Pre-mortality, mortality, you know, and afterlife. So, in doing that, the people themselves, if you think about material culture, right, the body itself became part of the ritual. The materiality of the body even is the metaphor, right? Of reaction. And so, then what happens is you frame that by murals.
So murals were a common, no, I don't want to say common. Murals existed in 19th-century America and 18th-century America. People sometimes would go to see panoramas of somebody paint this round room of Versailles, let's say, and visitors could stand and look around the room like they're in Versailles, right? And so, [00:18:00] then for interior painting surfaces. So, he's borrowing from that tradition in creating this immersive environment, a creation room, a world room, right? Now, Smith doesn't have murals in his time, but the later temples do. You know, he, he makes this makeshift do in the Redbrick Store, in the attic, the Nauvoo temple, et cetera, right? So, but in the endowment house on Temple Square, the basement of St. George Temple, and then in the big temples, they do create these murals. And they, and so they create in the participants this sense of when you went from one room to the next room to the next room, this sense of progression you feel it in your body going up the stairs from the creation room to the garden room, right?
And it's different. And then you go up the stairs and go and to where this, you know, celestial room. And [00:19:00] so the Cardston Temple in Alberta, you know, has the same connected room progression with the murals. And to do that, they valued, they needed painters who could do these and do them well, and Church leaders wanted them to be really well done, and they went to, to a lot of effort to make it so.
Jenny Champoux: Okay. I want to shift gears a little bit. I was interested in your chapter, how you talked about how certain spaces of the temple could be read as, as gendered. That some are male and some are female. What messages do the temple art and architecture send about gender divisions and hierarchies, either historically or today? Or what's changed over time?
Josh Probert: Yeah, that's, that's a, it's a big topic and, and, let me say, one of the things I wanted to do in my [00:20:00] chapter is show the ways that the 19th century temples complicated gendered spaces and appropriated them. Because one of the things that temple architecture does is it borrows from preexisting forms, meaning cultural forms, whether it's public architecture, Masonic architecture, domestic architecture, theater, architecture, you know, proscenium and curtain and the whole deal. And then, you know, like Claude Lévi-Strauss would call this, you know, a bricolage or a bricoleur type of creating something new out of these existing things. And in doing that, in the 19th century, the home increasingly became the domain of women. As industrialization happens, urbanization and [00:21:00] professionalization of, you know, things like now men will take the boat in from Staten Island to New York and work at an accounting firm, at an insurance company, at a finance firm, right?
And a woman will take care of the home. Whereas if you think like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson's time, the home, that was their office, that was their public representation of themselves, their gentility, their refinement, et cetera. Right. And so, it's not to say that the house wasn't still a man's place or that it wasn't a reflective of him, but you know, then you have spaces within it. And the temple designers, they introduce endowment rooms into the Salt Lake Temple, the Logan Temple, and the Manti Temple. They use the language of a Victorian parlor as a metaphor of the Celestial Kingdom. And parlors were, by and large, you could argue women's spaces in middle class, upper [00:22:00] middle class, domestic homes. It gets more complicated when you get to the Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers. But largely, I think it's safe to say that, and so in the Salt Lake Temple though, you have this like parlor, but then there are portraits of Church, of priesthood leaders throughout it. And then later, in the early like 1900s, then there are portraits of the presidents of the Relief Society who were also the president or the matron of the Salt Lake Temple in the hall, just outside the doors. And so it's this sort of flipping, you know, and so it's sort of this tension where in the one hand the women do exercise and act under priesthood authority in the, in the temple. But there's this sense of that the priesthood though, that the ordained men [00:23:00] held was the key to going through that veil. If that makes sense.
The best metaphor of that, it was in the Nauvoo Temple attic. There's a great painting at the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum of Brigham Young, it's really huge.
It's really cool. I'm guessing Ashlee talked about this
Jenny Champoux: She did. Yeah.
Josh Probert: And so when you, it was right there when you came through, you know, because there are people warring over who is Joseph Smith's successor.
Jenny Champoux: Right.
Josh Probert: Rigdon, Strang, whoever, and, and Brigham Young saying, no. Here I am with my hand on the book of the Law of the Lord, and he would, and he wouldn't have necessarily at that time, said to go through me. He would've said, gone through the 12 and I am the president of the 12. And Joseph Smith gave us the keys. So that's one way in which gender kind of, I don't, I don't want to say in simple ways, oh, it's a man's room, it's a woman's, but that it's complicated. But there are also, um. Originally participants, men's side on one side, women's side on another side in the endowment. They still do that. And so this is an interesting, you know, practice. Quakers did this, other religious groups did that in their services. But you know, the metaphor there, right, is about like eternal union. And then in the celestial room everybody mingles.
Jenny Champoux: Hmm.
Josh Probert: And so, I read it that way. I think it can be read that way, that there's, there's this necessity of, of eternal marriage to be in the celestial kingdom, right? Or I dunno. Now you don't have to be married to go through an endowment, so it's more complicated.
But, but you can see kind of how they're thinking about that. Adam and Eve are clearly demarcated. Now. And the other [00:25:00] way is that you have women's, there were women's washing rooms and initiatory rooms.
There were men's initiatory and what, where they acted alone. Women didn't have men in their supervising them. Right. And so in that way it's a gendered space of power, for women. And then just the way also that, you know, like when I talk about those portraits, like say you go into a Masonic Hall, like the Philadelphia famous Masonic Hall, or they, you'll see all these men right in the halls, da, da, da. And so I think it's really cool that in the early 20th century they had this portraits of the matrons of the temple. And then that has continued it through most 20th century temples that you will have portraits of the president and the matron both, lining the walls. In some temples, they've taken them down because it's become like 50 of them or something.
It's just too many they've, but it was a tradition to [00:26:00] honor not just the president, but the matron as well.
Jenny Champoux: That's really interesting history. I haven't actually seen that anywhere, so I was excited to learn about that in your chapter. I also really liked the way you talked about this Victorian parlor culture and how that, at the time that these early temples were being built, kind of filtered into the way we thought about how to decorate temples, interiors.
And this theme keeps popping up in our episodes in this series. Of the late 19th century, early 20th century Saints, feeling this really strong need to show the rest of the world that they are respectable and refined. And there's all these different ways they do that. It sounds like this is another one of those ways, but how, how are they trying to balance that sort of refined, it's almost opulent, kind of decoration with this sort [00:27:00] of, you know, call to be humble and this sort of Protestant heritage that you talked about?
Josh Probert: Right, right, right. Yeah. And this is the main architecture I want in my chapter to hang on, that you lay out, thematic or, you know, architecture. Uh, I, I guess I shouldn't use the word architecture talking about temple, that's, you know. Academic scaffolding. How's that?
Jenny Champoux: Great.
Josh Probert: Theoretical scaffolding. Because this is one of the fundamental tensions of the Church, of the culture. It's in the Book of Mormon, replete about God will bless you if you're righteous, you'll prosper in the land and, you know, seek first the kingdom of God and all things, things will be added unto you. But then, and Brigham Young talks about this and he was scared to about it. He warned about these people can withstand persecution and famine and whatever else he said. Right? But I [00:28:00] don't know if they'll be able to withstand riches. Or wealth. And so, that tension goes through the Book of Mormon, right? The, the pride follows and the Book of Mormon's critical of people who are overly fancy worrying about their dress,
Jenny Champoux: Yeah.
Josh Probert: oppressing the poor class struggle, right? All that stuff. And I wish I had this picture, but in the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum, there's a, a needle point work. I don't know if we know who it's by, but it has a beehive, the symbol of, you know, Mormon communitarianism and it says, “growing in wealth” on it. And so it so is like, wow, that is that pole right there. Right. Somebody had that hanging in their house that stitched it and, and it's a sign of righteousness, right? It's like a prosperity gospel type play of, [00:29:00] of, you know, look at how God is blessing us. The desert is blossoming as a rose, et cetera. And then on the other hand, that warning against pride. So, so this tension is there in temples. Joseph Smith lays out, he was very, just very audacious in what he said a temple would be. I have, you know, like just a quote here, a couple quotes wherein, you know, he talks about Zion itself, that Nauvoo at the time it actually says Nauvoo is to be polished with refinement, which is after the similitude of a palace in 1843. You know, build a temple to my great name, the revelation says, and call the attention of the great, the rich and the noble. And then he says, then designed and contribute to the erection of temples, sanctuaries, and [00:30:00] palaces, such as the world never saw with their walls. Finished with the pencil of Raphael, decorated with gold and pearls and precious stones. So this is like, you know, something to rival St. Peter's Basilica.
Or Buckingham Palace or more because he says such as the world never saw and, and so I think that speaks to the seriousness, which he took. His revelations and the priesthood and what he, his, you know, what you might call his project of his life. That, that he believed that deeply in what the importance of these ordinances and these buildings that this is, I talk about metaphor, right, he, he's thinking metaphor. That's why a simple meetinghouseg has like when it needed to be. So, he lays out that poll. But then, the Kirtland Temple, [00:31:00] handsome, conservative Protestant building.
The Nauvoo Temple is very lovely. It rivaled a lot of nice city churches, but it wasn't, like I say this crazy, you know, there's no precious stones and golden pearls. Right? It, or like you would see in, you know, like a medieval cathedral. You know, when they get to Utah, they do have the chance to build these more robust designs. The Salt Lake Temple, for example, the exterior is an exuberant, sort of Gothic Revival expression, but the original interior plans are very simple. Uh, you know, engaged pilaster columns and they had some carvings, maybe some even figures of Joseph Smith and Hiram Smith that were to be in it. But it wasn't all that, you know, and so that Protestant heritage I've argued, put the brakes on it, that there's just something in the culture that just feels like, ah, we want it to be nice, but it can't be that nice. [00:32:00] We can't be too, you know, over the top. What I argue is that, that that's what puts the brakes on it. That, that the reason we never get, you know, whatever this would've been, you know, when he says temples is the world never saw these palaces. And the word palace could be used at that time for not just palaces, but for like other things. It's because of that Protestant heritage that said anything that distracts from the preached word of God is idolatrous. If you go to colonial Massachusetts and look at a meetinghouse, right, it would just been simple. No organ, no windows of stained glass. No. Just the preached word of God, right? And that's the world that Joseph Smith grew up in and his contemporaries.
And the other I think is, is the warning against being prideful, being worldly vain. All those characteristics [00:33:00] that the gospel teaches against. And so you have this tension that Hebrew Bible descriptions of the temples how great they should be, right? It's the house of the Lord, but then these cultural constraints that shape and so that, that spectrum, it's constantly moving.
It's never, since 1836 rested, like, this is it, this is the way that Latter-day Saints do it. It's, this generation of leaders, and that generation, oh, and styles come in and out and it's, it's kind of a moving conversation.
Jenny Champoux: Amazing. I'm really interested in that, that tension there and the initial vision, but then sort of how it gets tempered in the actual production of it. Another tension that I found really interesting while reading your chapter and Colleen's chapter was the fact that the temple experience is meant to be a really powerful experience for an [00:34:00] individual, for one person. At the same time, temples are meant to sort of usher many people through, when we're trying to do, you know, do temple work for all of humanity here. And so there's this pull between like a powerful personal experience and a need for efficiency.
I got married, I got sealed in the Washington DC Temple, which is where I grew up back there. And my friends who were not members of the church, several of them would say things like, oh wow, like, that must have been amazing. You know, thinking it's like the National Cathedral kind of, you know, with like a beautiful long nave and stained glass windows. And, you know, it's not, it's not that at all.
And that's I think, a really interesting tension too. How do you see that in the evolution of temple design?
Josh Probert: That's a great question and it's a, it's a I'll, I'll try to not be too long-winded about it.[00:35:00]
You used the example of sealing. Sealings have had, have become less expedited over the past two centuries. Whereas endowments have become more. There was a sealer, uh, George F. Richards, uh, I hope I can remember his name in the early 20th century. He was a member the 12, Salt Lake Temple president, and he would brag about how many ceilings he could do an hour. You know, like 40 or something. And so people would just come in and you'd crank, crank, crank, crank. There the sealing rooms originally were quite small. Most of them. I mean the Manti sealing room for the living was a little larger, but there's usually a sealing room for the living and a sealing room for the dead. And that's how the ordinances were, you know, divided up. And so people talk about. Say you're from Southern Utah and you come to Salt Lake that you would go get [00:36:00] sealed and come home or go get married in the, it, and you didn't invite your parents and grandparents and aunts, and today, you know, all these friends, so you can have like, you know, a hundred people there instead.
It was, it was a quick thing. Today it's, it's a, a bigger, longer ordinance, not the ordinance, but everything around it, right. And all the people. So in that way it's been less, it's become less efficient in terms of endowment. It's become much more, because in the 19th century when you went to the temple, it could take up six to eight hours, um, to go through a
Jenny Champoux: Hmm.
Josh Probert: because you would start, you would do initiatories and baptism as part of your thing.
The way I understood it, I could be wrong, but, and then there were additional components that aren't there now. And there were lectures, lectures here, lectures there, hymns [00:37:00] et cetera. And so it sort of flushed it out. And the way I understand it, people would bring lunch and you have lunch break and then come back and, so it was a big to do. And so that's what, and that, and that's what I, uh, me when I talk about that immersive, you know, experience that. Metaphorically liturgically, saturated with meaning, experience that went through it all. So of the, um, things that happens in the Western, well, not in the world, not just the western world, the world is with the, a adoption of efficiency. You know, methods of efficiency that go into things like factories in the 19th century, businesses and scientific farming, all that, that way of thinking of how to save time, how do things more [00:38:00] quickly. It speeds up society altogether. It saves time, but it, it creates more of itself and it just keeps to where today people are as busy as they are as ever. And so, for the Church today, if I am a parent that I work a job eight hours a day and I have kids that have to go to soccer practice and choir practice and dah, dah, dah, I've gotta do all these things. What am I gonna spend eight hours or six hours, whatever it might be to go to the temple? And so that trajectory has changed over that time, whereas in the 19th century you could take a day off the farm and have somebody feed the cows or weed the garden or whatever. Right. And it, it was easier. And so, there's a practical, I [00:39:00] think, reason, you know, that helps explain it along with the theological urgency that I think you touched on earlier of, of saving as many souls as possible.
Jenny Champoux: Right, right. Okay, so we've talked quite a bit about the evolution of temple art and architecture in the United States. But you know, we are a global church and it's exciting to see new temples being announced all the time. All over the world, lots of different countries and cultures.
What differences do you see in the art and architecture in those temples? Or is there kind of a blending of the sort of traditional Western styles or the parlor refinement that you talked about? Is that still coming across in these international temples?
Josh Probert: Right, right. It's a, it is a good question. Um, [00:40:00] the 19th-century American floor plan, uh, general structure survives wherever it goes. What has changed is the way that floor plan and architecture is expressed in its ornament, in its design, in its massing to be sensitive to local cultures and to communicate that the Church's project of building Zion in a post Joseph F. Smith world, where he instructed the saints to build Zion where they are instead of immigrating to Utah. Right. That [00:41:00] building of Zion is enculturated and localized. So I use the example of the Tijuana Temple, for example, in my, in my chapter that has this sort of Spanish Baroque Revival architecture, Spanish tiles, et cetera. So that has been done in various ways throughout the Church. And I know that, uh, both the design teams and the General Authorities and people are very sensitive to this topic.
Jenny Champoux: Yeah, so even I've heard things like the kind of fabrics that are being chosen for furniture in different temples would be more familiar or appropriate to that culture.
Josh Probert: Yeah.
Jenny Champoux: the artwork, and as you said, even the, you know, the facade, [00:42:00] the, the shape of the building.
Josh Probert: Yeah, that's right.
Jenny Champoux: Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. To think more about the art inside the temple, and this is gonna point more to Colleen's chapter, but if you don't mind taking a stab at this, Colleen said that in the past 20 years, or 25 years, really in the 21st century, there's been this massive effort by Church leaders to update artworks in the temple and to improve the quality of the art.
She pointed out that there have been more than 300 original easel paintings and 40 murals placed in temples since the year 2000. So can, what's different in terms of both the style and maybe the content between this new art and what we used to see in the temples?
Josh Probert: Okay. Well, in the earliest [00:43:00] makeshift celestial room, in the attic of the Nauvoo Temple, we have record of what was there they brought portraits, maps, mirrors, things that they had in their houses. Just sort of brought 'em and hung 'em up. And there you go to that. There's these signs of gentility. That's what, you know, these all are markers of. And in the later temples in the 19th century you have the murals, but portraiture still is a, a real dominant thing in these, and then the 20th century and up through, let's say the 1980s, with the more, let's call them modern of architecture with less ornate ceilings, less ornate and interiors. [00:44:00] It wasn't as amenable to a fairly French frame, you know, like a Rococo Revival frame or something like that. It sort of didn't have the same design discourse at play.
Jenny Champoux: Right.
Josh Probert: and, and so that was one, that's one piece is that there was just a simplification of design throughout the western world altogether. I think you could argue other places in the world as well. I just need to be careful. I don't know everything about like, you know, a lot of overseas stuff.
But the second thing is that there's a concern for standardization that happens with correlation in the Church and that the same message is [00:45:00] being communicated from whether it was in Salt Lake or the Philippines or Brazil or whatever. And so that gets into all this question about art and what's appropriate and what's not. And so, there was a limited, a very limited number of images that the Church owned the copyright to, and that were comfortable with being used. And so that's one of the reasons is that you just don't have a lot of of images to select from. With this efflorescence of temple building since Gordon B. Hinkley that it's just, you know, skyrocketed.
There’s a demand for more quantity of art. For global art that reflects global cultures in the same [00:46:00] way that the architecture does. So that's a demand, whether it's landscapes or figures. There's a demand for racial diversity from Church leadership and we didn't have all those in the catalog, so to say. Right. So, what's happened is then, there has been an official you know, drive to increase art, but not just for like an 1880s, you know, art for art's sake, aesthetic movement type. And you know, it's not just for its own. It, it has a, to go circle back to your question a while ago of. There are specific stories that are told. There are specific stories that are selected, you know, about Old Testament [00:47:00] anointing and stuff like that will be by the initiators. The resurrection as you exit the building is often there. Women, scriptural female figures or other figures will be by women's spaces. And so the, there's a lot of demand to create specific meanings, because any artistic iconographic program is always selective. You can't have a painting that shows every verse of the Bible or the Book of Mormon. I guess you could, it'd be millions of paintings, right? So one has to choose are the stories that even though all this that, that we privilege or that help frame and give meaning this is why this building's here, this is what this ordinance does.
And so, so I think on the one [00:48:00] hand, yeah, it's about quality, it's about taste, it's about beauty. And I don't wanna downplay any of that because that is clearly a part of it, but I don't want to underplay the important iconographic, role that the artistic program plays, um, both culturally and spiritually.
Jenny Champoux: Yeah, and it seems like the art is really meant to help patrons feel included and to feel the love of the Savior for them specifically for all, for all of his, you know, for all of us. I know Colleen mentioned in her chapter, one of the new newer trends she's seen in the more recent batch of art going in the temples is even some non-scriptural figures. So maybe just kind of a sort of an every woman, um, who's not white,
Josh Probert: Yep.
Jenny Champoux: Elspeth Young has done some like [00:49:00] this in the DC Temple in the new renovation there. So including, right, racial diversity and, yeah, just I think, I think that's really interesting that you were saying that you feel that from the Church leaders too, that there's that call for good art, but art that includes everyone.
Josh Probert: Yeah. Let me touch on, on something, another reason that's a little more banal or quotidian. And that's technology. That today one can take a high res photograph of an oil on canvas painting and have a giclee print made of it that looks really, really good. Some of them you have to go up and really look at it.
Is this a print or is this an original? I can't tell. And whereas the art in the sixties and seventies looked like prints of art, know, and, and the colors weren't great. They faded and the colors changed. And so, it wasn't the same thing. [00:50:00] So with today's technology, the Temple Department and the special projects department can take that Elspeth Young painting that was commissioned for one building and put in 200 temples if they want, and it will look really great.
Jenny Champoux: Mm-hmm. Yeah, interesting. But at the same time, it seems like the Church is also making a real effort to not allow paintings that are hung in the temple to be available publicly or for private use or purchase. And I don't know what, I mean, it seems to me like partly that's motivated by a desire not to, you know, see the temple as an art museum. That's not why we go there. I don't know. Are there other reasons why they would wanna keep that art special?
Josh Probert: I, my official answer on that is I don't know.
Jenny Champoux: okay.
Josh Probert: I can't speak for whoever made those decisions, but I can speak [00:51:00] to an effect of it. And that is, um, of the ways that we create sacred space in addition to dedicating a building, right? like we just saw the consecration of the Notre Dame Cathedral.
Like this is a elaborate ritual and the blessing of the altar. And that, you know, in the, in the Catholic believing mind is what makes it a cathedral, but look at all the architecture, what they did, you know, in the Middle Ages to make it feel like not so, it doesn't feel like a grocery store or, you know, I mean it so, so with both of our play with temples, we have priesthood, dedications, but the same way the design and the beauty of it is meant to say, am set apart and an Old Testament, ancient Hebrew ideas of holiness.
That's boils down to that in a lot of ways. It's, it's something that's set [00:52:00] apart from the world. It's separate from the world. And so, when you have art that's only in there, adds to that separateness there's something. We want these spaces to not feel like your refrigerator magnet art. Because that's what can happen. If you take that temple art and now it's available for purchase anywhere, it's the same picture anywhere. So, so in this way it sort of makes it special it's not, in the same commoditized, maybe, or commercial market. Now, the downside of that is a lot of people, they, they find great inspiration and power and, oh, I wish I had that portrait of the savior. It just speaks to my soul.
Jenny Champoux: Hmm.
Josh Probert: Um, but, but that, but I do, I, I think that is something that is at play with it.
Jenny Champoux: Interesting. I think that's probably a good insight.
Josh, I'm [00:53:00] ending every one of these episodes by asking our guest to share with us a work of art that is especially meaningful to them. And for you, it can be an artwork or you could choose architecture if that,
Josh Probert: Okay.
Jenny Champoux: if that suits you better.
Josh Probert: Okay. Well since that's my, my beat on this book, this project, I'll, I'll stick with architecture. And there are a lot, uh, I could go through, meetinghouses, tabernacles. There are chapels, there are buildings that are, I think very important to our cultural heritage and to my personal identity that's tied into up into them. I think they're really special.
I think the Manti Temple is what the one I would highlight at the end of our discussion. It is, it's important to me because I mean, that's where a lot of, at least on [00:54:00] my, you know, my parents were sealed there. My family grandparents on my dad's side anyway, and on others. And so as far as like I have a rich non-Mormon, you know, history as well. And, and we all do actually when you get past 1830. Right. So I have that right, that was my temple as a kid. And I went there and all that. So that's a little personal piece. The other thing is, oh, and I've, you know, been able to work on it to, you know, help design new furnishings and all that.
The Manti Temple is one of the masterpieces of Church architecture. In my article I quote Thomas Carter as saying, it's the finest piece of Mormon architecture. It's so, it's a stunt in a way [00:55:00] to build this Gothic Revival mass with its crenelations that has this fortresslike feeling to it. Then to put Second Empire Mansard cupolas at the two ends, which was in the United States, largely a sign of domestic architecture. Now in Paris, it's often on civic buildings and government buildings, right? Hotels. But a lot of Second Empire houses in America had that cupola on it. So, the architect, a gentleman named William Folsom, talented guy. And so, to, to mix those styles and to just have it sing and just be perfect. It combines, in many ways, it makes the temple, it domesticates it as a literal house of the Lord.
Through that, I think through that language, [00:56:00] Second Empire, I, I, if there's one out there, I'm open to seeing it. I've never seen something like that on a religious building anywhere else. Government, buildings, houses, but, and so it was for him to be like, I'm gonna take that and put it on a religious building.
I think it was, and then it like worked. And then this, the audacious of it that the Salt Lake Temple is audacious, don't get me wrong. But you do have a respectable population center here that is building it over 40 years. Uh, and in Manti there's almost nobody. It is tiny. And Ephraim, Spring City, Fairview, all these little towns, right?
It's not a big settlement, but look at this. And so it speaks, it has the same sort of cultural aspirations [00:57:00] of poor immigrants in America. If you go through Pittsburgh or Cincinnati or some of these cities, you'll see, oh, here's the poor Polish immigrant neighborhood, and there's this huge church, right?
Think of St. Patrick's Cathedral. I mean poor Irish people who built this monument to their faith. So this is what the settlers in Sanpete County, they're up to in, in a similar way, it's a similar project of being in America, a lot of them are immigrants down there from Scandinavia, and they're building this huge towering monument to their faith.
But in this case, it's not an urban center. It's in the middle of the nowhere and it's not just the exterior. The interior was really well done. The Celestial Room was amazing. The Terrestrial room. All the architecture [00:58:00] and there are so many elements in the interior and with the, the decorative paint schemes, like all the different layers of colors and, uh, and the, if you go in the sealing room for the dead, it's one of the most fantastic rooms anywhere in the Church. The people that built it lived in quite humble homes. And so I think that temple, I and, and in Salt Lake in many ways, they, they really are fulfillments, the closest in their cultural relative worlds of what Joseph Smith saw a temple to be so different from your everyday [00:59:00] experience.
Jenny Champoux: That is such great insight. I, it's true when you drive from Salt Lake down to Manti and, and you come, you pass through Ephraim and then you go into Manti and you see the temple on the horizon just rising up out of this desert landscape and. Like you said, the architecture sings. That's a great way to describe it.
It just, uh, it's really magnificent and, and the interior too. And thank you for the work you've done on, on restoring that and
Josh Probert: Thank you.
Jenny Champoux: preserving that history for all of us,
Josh Probert: Thank you.
Jenny Champoux: Josh, you've helped us so much to think more deeply about the art and architecture of our most sacred spaces today. Thank you so much for joining us.
Josh Probert: Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Jenny Champoux: For our listeners, I hope you'll tune in next time. We'll turn our attention then to Latte-day Saint film studies. Mason Allred, who was also one of the co-editors [01:00:00] on this book, and Randy Astle will join us to talk about films and Latter-day Saint art. We'll see you then.
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 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 [01:07:00] 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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