Deeply disappointed about this development (SLC Temple)

Me too. I have never been inside the SLC or Manti temples and will never see these.

Could you imagine the Vatican ordering famous cathedral frescos to be painted over? Maybe the Chinese government, but they have been run by barbarians since Mao took over.

Utah has relatively little built heritage compared to, say, Europe. This is the worst type of correlation and cultural vandalism. The worst part is that they probably thought they were doing no wrong.

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/03/12/lds-church-removes/

In a blow to preservationists and many Latter-day Saints, historic murals in the iconic Salt Lake Temple — some that were painted by Mormon artists sent to study in Paris in the 1890s — have been removed during the ongoing renovation and will not be returned.

The same extraction also is planned for the pioneer-era Manti Temple, which houses one of Mormonism’s artistic gems — a “world room” mural painted by the famed Minerva Teichert, who studied at the Chicago Art Institute in the early 20th century.

“This feels like a huge and unnecessary loss,” said Haglund, former editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. “We have many temples not functioning at full capacity, and the reasons the Salt Lake and Manti temples were so well-attended surely have much to do with their beauty and historical significance. The loss of that beauty cannot be compensated by increased efficiency.”

Patrick Mason, head of Mormon history and culture at Utah State University, said his “heart dropped” when he heard that the murals would be removed.

“These are priceless cultural artifacts that can never be replaced if destroyed,” Mason said. “The murals in the Manti Temple by Minerva Teichert, one of the few prominent female LDS artists of the 20th century, are particularly stunning, even if some of the artistic elements no longer conform to current cultural sensibilities.”

I have been to the Salt Lake Temple for a live session once. I am not so disappointed in ending the live sessions, the movie really is better. However, I am very disappointed in doing away with the art work in both temples. Sad day.

I would have loved to see a live session. I’m told the actors tended to be elderly, but it is something I would have loved to see at least once.

It pains me that they have been so callous about the murals. It reminds me a bit of a bar I used to go to, which had an amazing mural of the famous scene of Sherlock Holmes tussling with Prof. Moriarty by the Reichenbach Falls, appropriately at the top of some stairs… It changed hands and the mural was quickly painted over. I have photographs of it at least. It is probably facetious to compare a bar with a temple, but once it’s gone it’s gone, and photographs don’t capture it.

The worst part is that, like I say, those who did this probably thought they did nothing wrong. We have similar struggles every day around the world – people want to tear down woods or knock down old buildings, dig up old graves or even rebrand a place with a stupid inappropriate name. It is often done in the name of progress, but the progress is rarely enough to compensate.

A Masonic lodge down the road from me went on fire some years ago. (It was an indisputable accident, no foul play – it happened because a heater caught fire in a gym next door while people were using it) Like the temple, the public couldn’t go in. The roof was off and you could see these beautiful Masonic murals gradually being washed away by the rain. That was accidental, but it was sad to watch and despite the vast wealth of Freemasonry, none of the rich lodges coughed up money to repair it. The place is still a shell.

I take Patrick Mason’s point that Teichert’s style is out of date, but she is a fascinating woman. In fact, they are erasing some of Utah’s women’s history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerva_Teichert

There are some things the church does I struggle with. This is definitely one of them. Correlation is not something I am a fan of, but it happened here.

A local temple in my area was recently renovated and went the opposite direction. It was generic and sterile before but now it has a lot more local character. Go figure.

Other than the Celestial Room, the endowment rooms in our temple are very dull to be honest. The celestial room is beautiful, but the previous two are a cinema in which everything is cream/beige/yellow, and the next is dull except some tiny windows. I think every element in those two rooms is industrially manufactured, and can probably be found everywhere from Honshu to Honduras.

The gardens are a bit mixed in their approach. They have featured on national television here, and personally I like them, but the gardening style itself is too, well, American. It is out of place… That said, our temple is built in a fairly ugly location except for some farmland nearby, and it is like a beacon of beauty at night. So sure, it’s out of place, but it has improved the neighborhood.

A live play is never the same twice. A film is, although you can have different reactions to it. Live sessions come and go, but losing the murals? Just why? Homogenization? Supposed progress? Or something they were embarassed by?

I just hope the plaster fittings, carvings etc are all intact.

I need to read more on that subject but I’m guessing it has more to do with an unfortunate casualty of some other design decision than an intentional decision to remove them.

It’s kinda hard to see how that would get rid of all the murals.

I used to be very much interested in the history, art and architecture of the temples and it was one of the initial factors that drew me into Mormonism, at least from the framework of historical interest (there were other factors too, social, theological, etc.) Even after I became inactive and no longer held a recommend I’d go to open houses whenever possible and have been to about a dozen of them.

It may be that with the conversion to all video presentation and holding the endowment in one room per session (i.e. the patrons no longer “progress” from one room to the next as the narrative unfolds) they felt that the murals would no longer make sense in terms of the point in the narrative they were intended for (creation, garden, world.) Still, it seems that it wouldn’t have hurt to keep them on. Many newer temples also have murals and maybe there are plans to create more modern designs that are more generic, hard to say.

The whole point of the progressive endowment was to demonstrate through the different parts of the narrative the, well, progression from one state of life to another: creation, the garden of Eden, the lone and dreary world. It also allowed a nice couple of breaks so that patrons could get up and move to another space and created some anticipation for the next phase. (IIRC, the terrestrial and celestial rooms are the only two that normally don’t and didn’t have murals.)

The computer renders they previously released showing what the renovated Temple Square will look like were impressive (I like the idea of the long skylight on the ceiling of the entry hall leading to the recommend desk) so I hope there is some saving grace in the remodeling.

I am also greatly disappointed. This is a bad decision.