Islamic Art Welcomed at Utah's Mormon University Museum of Art

ELEVEN NEWS

UTAH - Bringham Young University’s Museum of Art announced Wednesday morning its upcoming exhibition of Islamic art. The exhibit will feature more than 250 pieces of art from more than 10 different countries and in February BYU will be this exhibit’s first stop on its tour throughout the country. “Beauty is a universal concept. A unifying force and a source for hope for a better future,” said BYU College of Fine Arts and Humanities Dean Stephen Jones. The MOA is known for being the premier art museum in the Mountain West and the most attended university art museum in North America. The museum’s upcoming addition entitled “Beauty and Belief: Crossing Bridges with the Arts of Islamic Culture” will feature art foreign to many in Utah. Sabiha al Khemir is an expert in Islamic art and serves as project director of the new exhibit that will travel to art museums throughout the United States after its stay at BYU-Museum of Art. Museum officials also say they hope the art will help viewers value the diversity and richness of the Islamic culture. [link]

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‘I’m a Mormon’ Advertising Campaign Seeks to Improve Image

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Laurie Goodstein

The campaign, which uses the tagline “I'm a Mormon,”
has recently been extended to 21 media markets, including Seattle, above.

Top Mormon leaders had hired two big-name advertising agencies in 2009, Ogilvy & Mather and Hall & Partners, to find out what Americans think of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Using focus groups and surveys, they found that Americans who had any opinion at all used adjectives that were downright negative: “secretive,” “cultish,” “sexist,” “controlling,” “pushy,” “anti-gay.” On seeing these results, some of those watching the presentation booed while others laughed, according to people at the meetings. But then they were told that the church was ready with a response: a multimillion-dollar television, billboard and Internet advertising campaign that uses the tagline, “I’m a Mormon.” The campaign, which began last year but was recently extended to 21 media markets, features the personal stories of members who defy stereotyping, including a Hawaiian longboard surfing champion, a fashion designer and single father in New York City and a Haitian-American woman who is mayor of a small Utah city. [link]

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