ABSTRACT
On the evening of November 3, 1879, a crowd assembled in Mount Pleasant, a town in central Utah Territory, for a spectacle combining art viewing, religious observance, and entertainment. Unlike most panoramas, Christensen’s work has survived into the present—preserved by his family and then donated to Brigham Young University in 1953. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book begins by excavating the theology of visuality that informed nineteenth-century Mormonism. It addresses one of the most pressing issues faced by Mormon settlers during the territorial period. The book considers the place of women within the visual culture of nineteenth-century Mormonism. It reflects on the cultural contexts of nineteenth-century Mormon art while looking ahead to the developments in theology and society that would reorient Latter-day Saint artists’ perspectives in the first decades of the twentieth century.
