During a recent short visit to Salt Lake City, I spent a few hours wandering around Temple Square (what’s left of it) and adjacent LDS sites. Here’s my illustrated report.
Behold the Salt Lake Temple. The small photos I’ve seen in news reports didn’t really convey the extent of the rehab work being done on the building. Scaffolding now surrounds the entire structure. They have excavated surrounding the foundation probably two or three stories down. I’ll bet there was a meeting a few years ago where structural engineers told senior LDS leaders, “We could bring down the whole building and build you a brand new temple with a solid foundation, completely new wiring, plumbing, and so forth inside, for half the cost of the rehab work it will take to retrofit the existing structure.” But this landmark temple is simply too iconic to do that. It symbolizes not just the Church but also the pioneers who crossed the Plains and built a temple in the new Zion.
Remember the South Visitors Center? This is where it used to be. The walls you see going up are what I think will be the new and improved Visitors Center. I didn’t get a good look at the North Visitors Center, but I’m pretty sure it’s getting the same treatment. The old Tabernacle and the Assembly Hall structures are untouched and accessible. When everything is done it’s going to be a somewhat different Temple Square. If you are out in “the mission field” (not living in Utah or Idaho) and thinking about your first visit to Temple Square … wait a few years. If you come anyway, some of the exhibits and paintings that were previously in the Visitors Centers have been moved over to the Conference Center and are available for public viewing. At least that’s what I was told by a pair of sister missionaries. I didn’t have time to tour the Conference Center to confirm that.
I spent a couple of pleasant hours in the Church History Museum. The current exhibit is a bunch of Minerva Teichert paintings, along with some biographical material. This one is titled “Three Marys at the Tomb.” Take a good look at that angel. Sure looks like a she rather than a he to me. Every angel story in the Mormon narrative that I’m familiar with features male angels, in line with the thoroughly patriarchal mindset of the leadership. The gendered angels of Mormonism are primarily messengers (that’s what the Greek term transliterated as “angels” means) and so could in theory be either male or female. But I’m 99.9% sure that senior LDS leaders see angelic visitations as 100% priesthood functions. Can’t be an angel if you don’t have the priesthood. So this Minerva Teichert painting is subtly subversive, a feminist objection to the “everything is about priesthood and men” line of thinking in correlated LDS doctrine and history.
Here’s a photo of an exhibit in the Presidents section of the museum. You’ve probably heard of Orson Hyde’s prayer offered on the Mount of Olives in 1841. That was quite a trek to make in 1841. In the context of the current hostilities and barbarities engulfing the region (and likely to expand) at the present time, I though his prayer was worth a read.
There is the full text of his dedicatory prayer, displayed in both English and Hebrew. They could have chosen a better font for the English text if they expected anyone to actually read it. A more readable text of the prayer is at this link, down the page. May there be peace in the land.
Of course I stopped by the small book section in the gift shop, where one or two shelves feature most of the LDS titles from Oxford University Press, including Americanist Approaches to the Book of Mormon. Not a title I’d expect to see in an LDS building a stone’s throw from the COB. I’m guessing no one in LDS leadership has read it or even noticed it on the shelf.
Right next to the Church History Museum is the relatively new FamilySearch Library. Over in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, formerly the Hotel Utah (this building is also inaccessible right now) there used to be a lower floor with genealogy exhibits, several terminals, and a bunch of senior missionaries. I think that has all been moved over to this expanded FamilySearch Library. If you want to get started with the app (which keeps adding features and resources), they’ll give you a one hour, one-on-one lesson for how to use it. Very helpful.
Does anyone have any inside info for what’s going to replace the Visitors Centers on Temple Square? Any additional info on the Salt Lake Temple rehab, like are they going to redo the interior as well?
Wheat & Tares 
Thank you for the link to that prayer
this is even more important to the Church than City Creek Mall
I love the idea of female angels. Minerva Teichert is a real treasure. And I’m glad she is finally getting the recognition that she deserves.
The church published some details about their plans awhile back: https://www.thechurchnews.com/temples/2022/9/26/23373083/temple-square-renovation-update-pavilions-multilevel-building-replace-south-visitors-center
Where the south visitor center was there will be pavilions for better unobstructed views of the temple. Also a new scale cutaway model of the temple and what’s inside it. There will also be a permanent temple open house of sorts with replicas of various ordinance rooms.
I believe the old north visitor center will be mostly replaced by gardens, plus some amenities like more restrooms to support events at the tabernacle.
I believe the South Visitor Center is being replaced with pavilions for better unobstructed views of the temple plus a bunch of new interesting stuff for guests. There will be a scale cutaway model of the temple to show how its layout. There will also be a permanent temple open house of sorts with replica rooms of the various ordinance rooms in the temple. The North Visitor Center is being mostly replaced by gardens, plus some amenities like more restrooms to support events at the tabernacle and assembly hall.
(apologies if my other nearly identical comment finally makes its way through the spam filter)
Is Mary no. 3 (with braids) blonde, or is that just a trick of the light? And what’s that on her serving tray? I want to say coffee, but it looks more like a gravy boat. Could be a lamp, but why put it on a tray?
I went to one of those visitor centers, where they showed old Mormon TV commercials. Unfortunately not the ones I had been hoping for–I had to wait for YouTube to see “Never Tell a Lie” again. (As “Bob” says, all propaganda is God-breathed, provided you take it literally. Praise “Bob”!)
That’s cool, Pirate. I didn’t know about those details. Thanks for sharing.
Here’s a link from 2021 on the church news website about the interior. While they’ve given a great deal of detail about the exterior, they’ve been rather quiet about the interior. There will be no more live sessions and the murals have been removed.
“In the Salt Lake Temple, the addition of the new instruction rooms, a new method of presentation, seismic strengthening and changes to meet accessibility requirements meant that the temple murals would need to be moved and/or repainted. Some sections of the murals were in poor condition and beginning to crumble.”
“‘It was impossible to know whether the murals could be preserved during such a move,’ the First Presidency said. ‘They were originally painted directly on lath and plaster walls, which had been repaired and repainted many times because of water damage and other deterioration. Further, the change to a film presentation meant that the rooms would be reconfigured.’” (And yet, somehow it’s possible to preserve or restore artwork from Ancient Greece)
“For these reasons, the murals were carefully photographed and documented before removal, with some original portions being preserved in the Church’s archives.
“Many of the building’s other historic features also have been photographed and documented — and in some cases, architecturally salvaged.”
Protests in Manti led to the church’s decision to preserve that temple’s interior (not that the church would ever admit that the protests had anything to do with anything), but I fear the Salt Lake Temple has been turned into a fancy movie theater. It’s both a travesty and a tragedy. There are a few additional articles about it in the Salt Lake Tribune that I can hunt up if anyone wishes but I think my comment here is already very lengthy.
https://www.thechurchnews.com/2021/3/12/23218566/salt-lake-temple-changes-no-live-sessions-manti-utah-temple-renovation
Zla’od,
I think the container is for the spices that they intend to anoint the body with. And she does look very blonde to me too.
“Right next to the Church History Museum is the relatively new FamilySearch Library.”
This line made me smile. The relatively recently renamed FamilySearch Library housed in the building that was built forty years ago at the same time as the Museum of Church History and Art, and was known when it opened as the Genealogy Library, and later as the Family History Library. Prior to that I visited a couple of times when it was housed in the south wing of the Church Office Building. And it was 14 years ago that the Museum of Church History and Art became the Church History Museum and cleared out the LeConte Stewart, John Hafen, and Minerva Teichert paintings. I wonder where “Girl Among the Hollyhocks” is hanging today. I had a print of that one (bought at the museum around ’88) on a wall of my various apartments for about a dozen years.
It’s funny that no one at ChurchCo. will mention that Joe Smith “married” Orson’s wife after Joe sent him on this very dangerous mission. A mission he might’ve NEVER returned from…maybe that was the point?
The comment about Minerva Teichert finally getting recognition also made me smile, remembering exhibitions of her work almost forty years ago in the Museum of Church History and Art and in BYU’s Harris Fine Arts Center. I would guess she has been the church’s third most recognized dead painter for the forty years I’ve been noticing such things, after C.C.A. Christensen and now Arnold Friberg. Others may have different estimates of that.
I know that Girl Among the Hollyhocks was in President Monson’s office, at least until his death. No idea if RMN kept it.
One of my favorite paintings by Tiechert is from the moment in 3rd Nephi where the angels minister to the children. In Minerva’s interpretation, these angels are feeding the children from heaping baskets of breads and fruits. I love the connection between caring for bodies and souls, and the abundance of God.