International Art Competition

For more than a decade the LDS Church has organized an International Art Competition, each with its own theme. Variety and diversity figure centrally into the competition and the exhibit that results from it. Submissions arrive from Church members throughout the world and are judged and incorporated into a show, with a handful of works receiving special awards. This year’s theme, “Tell Me the Stories of Jesus,” brought entries from nearly a thousand artists from forty-four different countries. A five-person jury selected show entrants and winners, showcasing a wide range of media, techniques, styles, and aesthetic sensibilities. All of these works—paintings, photographs, sculptures, drawings, installations, and other forms—are on display at the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City, Utah. 

Featured on both the cover and inside this issue of Dialogue are works from the competition and the museum exhibit. Although only a handful of works and artists are represented here (all of the works can be viewed at the Church History Museum’s website at https://history.lds.org/exhibit/iac-2015-tell-me-the-stories-of-jesus), they convey something not only of the range and diversity of work in the show, but of the expanding aesthetic boundaries of what counts as devotional art within the Mormon tradition. The art on display is often modern, abstract, and even occasionally challenging; it also regularly draws on compositional approaches and imageries that are historically more often associated with Catholic art than with the Protestant aesthetics more commonly present in Mormon art. Consider the prevalence of Passion images and depictions of the cross. For decades, devotional LDS art had a strong but narrow overall aesthetic. As the Church grows and expands globally and Mormon art draws increasingly from diverse parts of the world, it is also drawing on those histories, including local, regional, and national art histories. 

—Andrea Davis and Brad Kramer, Dialogue Art Editors