The Center's Studio Podcast

After an emerging-artist blitz of 26 New York exhibitions in just 7 years, the award-winning visual artist Valerie Atkisson de Moura hit a wall. Adrift and depressed in a new home, she received a medical diagnosis of an incurable disease and discovered that her mother had the same disease but had kept it secret from the family. Then, in a horrible year, her mother died, Valerie was hit by a car and suffered head trauma that changed...

The exhibition The Delicate Ties That Bind explores the precariousness of post-pandemic existence and assesses the complex and often fragile relationships that shape our lives now. Curated by Megan Knobloch Geilman, these threads make up the nature of our reality and serve as metaphors for both a tattered society and the essential connections between us. In this interview, the curator describes the process of putting together this ...

A landmark exhibition spanning the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints marks a milestone in the culture's artistic output and appreciation. The 121-work exhibition, Work and Wonder: 200 Years of Latter-day Saint Art, is curated by Heather Belnap, Ashlee Whitaker Evans, and Brontë Hebdon. They join in this wide-ranging conversation about the show's five years of development and the four themes that e...

The publication of Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader is a landmark event, the first comprehensive critical examination of Mormon Art. In this interview, co-editors Mason Kamana Allred and Amanda Beardsley introduce the chapters with insights into the reasons why each is indispensable. Then, the authors of this 664-page book from Oxford University Press submitted questions for the podcast about the making of the book and what ...

The publication of Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader is a landmark event, the first comprehensive critical examination of Mormon Art. In this interview, co-editors Mason Kamana Allred and Amanda Beardsley introduce the chapters with insights into the reasons why each is indispensable. Then, the authors of this 664-page book from Oxford University Press submitted questions for the podcast about the making of the book and what ...

The young nonprofit organization, Inspired Arts League, is the focus of this interview with its founder Brittany Scott and executive producer Ellen Wheeler. It’s a fascinating model: invite global artists who are already accomplished to be members and give them as a group, through workshops and collaboration, tools to more effectively tell stories and inspire hope in the world through art. Scott and Wheeler announce their inaugural...

In this interview with Rachel Helps, Wikipedian-in-Residence at the BYU Library, researcher and author Helps explains her work refining, creating, correcting, and researching Wikipedia pages that relate to the unrivaled collection of Mormon Studies volumes at the Harold B Lee Library at Brigham Young University. The conversation includes interesting finds and experiences covering eight years of work and hundreds of articles. Helps ...

Brett Peterson is Director, Exhibition Media and Interactives at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which is at the forefront of engaging audiences and making exhibitions memorable by the creation of accompanying original, responsive digital media. In this episode Peterson describes the shifting expectation of visitors regarding technology. He tries  to find new ways to evoke emotions and heighten works on display,...

Artist Collin Bradford makes video, sound, photography, sculpture, and other media. In this interview, the incoming art department chair at Brigham Young University discusses his work, how art speaks directly to the brain through the senses, and his work as a reflection of concerns about the future. His video installation, A Burning Hope (2021) is part of the museum exhibition, Materializing Mormonism: Trajectories in Contemporary ...

This episode with composer S. Andrew Lloyd celebrates the world premiere of his song cycle, Amaranthine, which was written for and performed by international opera star Rachel Willis-Sørensen at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall, April 9, 2024. The composer discusses how he came to write the prize-winning work and his emotional response to hearing it for the first time. Amaranthine is the first composition to appear from The Ariel B...

The winner of the 2024 Prize of The Ariel Bybee Endowment at the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts is Mia Black. In this interview, Black introduces herself and her winning project, which will be a collection of American Folk Music aimed at elementary school-age classrooms. The breakthrough idea here is Black's plan to organize the collection using waves of immigrants and their songs to tell the story of what people brought wit...

Brad Pelo, President and Executive Producer of The Chosen discusses the series' global ambition to provide all episodes in 600 languages. The vast challenges of dubbing and subtitling the series about Jesus while maintaining the writer's unique contemporary dialogue and tone are discussed in this interview alongside the powerful experiences Pelo has witnessed riding the wave of this one-of-a-kind tv series.

Music...

Many arts audiences go to performances and exhibitions without thinking much about the institutional leadership that makes these events possible. In this episode, Richard Bushman, chairman of the board of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts and Mykal Urbina, the Center's executive director, announce a chairman-elect, Stanley Hainsworth. The trio talk about their favorite art forms and programs of the Center they love, and the...

In preparation for the 2024 Prize of The Ariel Bybee Endowment at the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts that will sponsor a new music program, singer and music education Jamie Peterson and intellectual property attorney Patrick Perkins discuss with passion the urgency for more music education in public schools. With the deadline for submissions fast approaching for submissions of new music ideas for the classroom (January 15, 2024),...

This show-and-tell episode features Erin Eastmond and Glen Nelson discussing holiday gift ideas by LDS creatives that are featured in the Center's Christmas Gift Guide. They include children's books, music, art, religious books, scholarly works, food, poetry, family activities, and a few items offered as benefit art works for the Center. Erin and Glen read excepts from the books and talk about how these items might be the...