Before then, images of Heavenly Mother were almost nonexistent. Although lacking official approval, Mormon artists have created numerous images of Heavenly Mother since 2012. The sudden increase in art about the divine feminine is far more varied and diverse in its conception of deity. If images of Heavenly Father and Jesus within Mormon art are a relatively recent and stable development, images of Heavenly Mother are cutting-edge and creative. At its highest levels, the LDS Church has adopted this relatively stagnant and narrow depiction of God. This version of Jesus-tall, white, and bearded-is one well-known to modern viewers and widely identifiable within European art traditions. In May 2020, the Church announced that meetinghouse foyers ought to display only paintings of Jesus Christ and offered a list of twenty-two approved paintings for this purpose, all of which featured Jesus Christ in this style. Laura Paulsen Howe, art curator for the Church History Museum, describes the Church’s embrace of images of Jesus as “a big cultural shift.” When they did appear, Church-approved images of Christ and Heavenly Father skewed heavily toward depicting white, European-looking men in an illustrative style. It was not until the mid-twentieth century that Mormon artists shifted toward portraying God, and even then did so in fairly limited ways. For the first century of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, members generally did not condone artistic renderings of deity, including those of Christ.
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