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Making the Absent Visible: The Real, Ideal, and the Abstract in Mormon Art

March 21, 2018

In April 1993, President Bill Clinton, Elie Wiesel, international dignitaries, and Holocaust survivors celebrated the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Initiated by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, the monument is one of the most expensive additions to the federal museum system. Its mission, described by the museum’s project director Michael Berenbaum, is to “memorialize the victims of Nazism by providing an exhaustive historical narrative of the Holocaust and to present visitors with an object lesson in the ethical ideals of American political culture by presenting the negation of those ideals.”

Letters to the Editor

March 21, 2018

Steven Orton, Remembering Dialogue
Gary Hernandez, Thoughts on Dialogue
Michael E. McDonald, Scriptural Cosmology
Lane Twitchell, An Artist Declares His Independence
D. Michael Quinn, Filling Gaps and Responding to “Silences in Mormon History”

About the Artist: Allan West

March 21, 2018

The American-born Allan West has become widely respected for his pursuit of a traditional form in Japan. Raised in Washington, D.C., Allan served in the Okayama Japan mission during the early 1980s. In 1987, he…

Frau Rüster and the Cure for Cognitive Dissonance

March 21, 2018

When Elder Callister and I leaned our bikes against the fence at Hermann-Löns-Straße 9 and walked to the door, I had no idea that what was about to transpire would shape and anchor my soul…

Depression and the Brethren of the Priesthood

March 21, 2018

During the last few years, I have come to feel that, if I were in charge of Church jargon, we would get rid of the words blessings, rewards, punishments, and tests. In place of those words, we would begin using “lessons to be learned.” I have also come to believe that some venue, or arena, or, at least, some safe place should be available where members could voice their concerns—without guilt—about their distresses, their disappointments, and their frustrations at what is going on in their lives. 

The Diary of a Historian | Richard Lyman Bushman, On the Road with Joseph Smith

March 21, 2018

In 1945, Fawn McKay Brodie’s biography of Joseph Smith, No Man Knows My History, was published by Knopf. The book received critical acclaim, establishing Brodie’s career as a biographer. 

Nevertheless, the biggest natural market for a scholarly bio of the Prophet, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was much more restrained.

At the End of the Street Lies the Sky

March 21, 2018

At the end of the street lies the sky 
dressed in the purple magician’s robe 
of eventide and the winter storm. 
Tonight she sculpts stairs of ice and 

Sonnet to Japanese Spring

March 21, 2018

Spring has come to old Nippon! 
Standing on a hill I see 
Verdant valleys neatly sown, 
Stepped and terraced, and a bee