Major renovation to close LDS Church History Museum for a year

SALT LAKE CITY For a quarter century, the Church History Museum across the street from historic Temple Square has told the story of the LDS Church though an exhibit called "A Covenant Restored."

In 12 days, that exhibit will be history, after drawing about 7 million visitors.

Not only will the exhibit close, but the museum will shut down for a year-long renovation on Oct. 6, one day after the conclusion of the church's semi-annual general conference, then re-open with an important new film, a major new exhibit and a new floor plan on the ground level.

The new exhibit, "The Heavens Are Opened," will focus on the years 1820-46 and continue the church's efforts to provide more, and more transparent, information about the faith's origins.

The museum is expected to re-open prior to general conference in 2015, said Elder Steven R. Snow, historian and recorder for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and executive director of the Church History Department.

For the past year, the church has been releasing new, scholarly essays on pieces of its history in the Gospel Topics section of LDS.org. Two of those essays First Vision accounts and Book of Mormon translation will have companion exhibits at the museum when it re-opens.

The museum's senior curator, Kurt Graham, said the museum and the Church History Department have made what he called "a very, very concerted effort" shepherded by Elder Snow to create consistency between the history found in the Joseph Smith Papers Project and the Gospel Topics pages and what is shared at the museum and the church's historic sites.

Kurt Graham, senior museum curator

"We want members of the church and people outside of the church who are looking for information to get a very consistent message," Graham said. "We don't want them to hear one thing in the museum and then something else on the church's internet site and something else at a historic site and something else in the Smith papers. It's all one message. We want to coordinate that so that the real, latest scholarship we're aware of is available in all of these venues, in all of these channels, for the public."

The new first-floor exhibit will have eight sections that significantly upgrade the use of media and technology in the museum, including the First Vision Theater where visitors will see a new movie, now in production, depicting Joseph Smith's descriptions of his 1820 vision of God the Father and Jesus Christ.

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Major renovation to close LDS Church History Museum for a year