Race and Representation in Latter-day Saint Art

As art historians researching the art and visual culture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the broader Latter-day Saint world, we see benefits to more scholarly discourse on race in art within the Church and its culture. The last decades have witnessed a dramatic increase in scholarship exploring race in historical and contemporary Mormonism. Yet much work remains to be done in addressing the role of images in constructing and promulgating Latter-day Saint views on race and ethnicity. Perhaps the critical importance of texts in the Church has overshadowed the communicative power of images. Studying a religion so centrally defined through written words, it's easy to assume that images are always accessories rather than central to creating meaning -- i.e. seeing images simply as illustrations. The naturalistic style typical of Latter-day Saint art (especially in the Church's first hundred years) doesn't help, either. Many artists invite us to see their polished, realistic works as straightforward representations of reality, not as subjective visions mediated through religious, cultural, and ideological perspectives.