• Home
  • First Vision exhibit opening and lecture by Steve Harper

First Vision exhibit opening and lecture by Steve Harper

The year 2020 marks a significant anniversary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Church remembers the sacred experience of the young boy prophet, Joseph Smith, in what is now referred to as the Sacred Grove in upstate New York. Joseph Smith’s First Vision of God the Father, and His Son, Jesus Christ–the event that marks the beginning of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ–occurred 200 years ago this coming Spring 2020.  L. Tom Perry Special Collections is pleased to announce a new exhibit titled “‘A Pillar of Light’: Celebrating 200 Years of the First Vision” that commemorates the bicentennial of this event next spring.  The exhibit is in the 1st floor exhibit gallery of the HBLL, just inside Special Collections, and will be up until the end of June 2020.  This exhibit allows viewers to explore the historical context of this event; the different historical accounts that have been recorded by Joseph Smith and others; the acquisition of the land on which the Sacred Grove is believed to have been; and how this event has been received both by scholars, artists, and others over the past 200 years.

In conjunction with the exhibit, the library will be hosting a small lecture series over the next few months on various aspects of the First Vision. This coming Thursday, September 12, at 2:00pm in the library auditorium, Steve Harper, Church History and Doctrine professor and BYU Studies Editor-in-Chief, will deliver a lecture entitled, “Putting the First Vision in the Pensieve, or How Joseph Remembered”. Dr. Harper will share some thoughts from his new book First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins. A book signing will follow.

We hope that you will come see this new exhibit and attend this lecture.  It promises to be a great experience!

Recent Posts

Archives