Donny Osmond is photographed inside Harrah’s Showroom prior to his show at Harrah’s Las Vegas on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024.

As the Deseret News celebrates its 175-year milestone, we’re looking at prominent arts and entertainment figures past and present who have graced the Beehive State with their talent.

It’s a robust roster that includes people who have left a big mark on the state’s culture — some born in Utah and others who arrived from elsewhere. It includes people who found a home in Utah, a sense of belonging. For several celebrities, Utah has been a refuge, an oasis of sorts away from Hollywood.

Here’s just a sampling of Utah’s arts and entertainment celebrities — including popular people in music, film, dance, theater, books and art.

Did we miss somebody? Let us know in the comments.

Popular music

Singers like Jewel and Brendon Urie from Panic! At the Disco hail from Utah, but didn’t live here long. Below are a few musicians and bands that have strong ties to the Beehive State:

The Osmonds

Long before there was Donny and Marie, or the superstardom of The Osmonds in the 1970s, there were the Osmond Brothers, a barbershop quartet-style act that had its unofficial start with a performance of “Oh Dear Lord in Heaven” for their Latter-day Saint church congregation in Ogden, Utah, as the Deseret News reported in 2018.

The Osmond Brothers began to gain traction as they performed for family and church parties in and around the Ogden area, ultimately leading to a debut on “The Andy Williams Show.”

Mary Signorelli and Gaby Castenetto, both of Las Vegas, speak with Donny Osmond at the VIP meet and greet prior to his show at Harrah’s Las Vegas on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News

And that was just the beginning. The Osmond siblings, arguably Utah’s most famous family, have spent decades in the music industry. But even amid the fame and touring and Las Vegas residencies, they still call Utah home.

Post Malone

Post Malone considers Utah an “oasis” away from Hollywood, and has been vocal about his love for the state ever since moving to the Cottonwood Heights area a few years ago.

Post Malone shows media around a remodeled Raising Cane’s Restaurant, designed by the singer, in Midvale on Thursday, April 13, 2023. Some of his guitars hang on the wall behind him. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

“Moving here to this amazing state was one of the best things I’ve done in my life, besides have a baby girl,” the rapper and singer said on the opening night of his “F-1 Trillion” tour at Utah First Credit Union Amphitheatre. “I gotta say, Utah is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, and I’m so grateful and so honored to be a resident here.”

Even at the height of stardom, the singer has remained connected to his Utah community. He appeared in a video promoting the city of Cottonwood Heights, is the face of a salmon pink Raising Cane’s location in Midvale and performed the national anthem at the 2023 NBA All-Star Game. He recently launched his first career stadium tour at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City.

David Archuleta

David Archuleta, a former longtime resident of Murray, rose to fame in his teens after being declared the “American Idol” runner-up in 2008. To date, Archuleta remains the highest-placing Utah singer on the show.

The “Crush” singer has released several albums and recently announced his first new music in five years, due later this summer. He’ll return to Utah for a show at Salt Lake City’s The Complex in September.

Graham Russell

Graham Russell, the singer-guitarist in Air Supply, discovered his love for Utah while performing a two-weekend stint in Las Vegas more than 30 years ago. He was so stunned by the Wasatch Mountains, he said, that he immediately began looking at land.

“(The real estate agent said), ‘I’m going to show you this, but you won’t like it because it’s kind of weird. The house is circular, there’s no right angles and it’s not even near completed. … But it comes with 120 acres,’” Russell recalled.

He bought it that very day — for $500 an acre.

Graham Russell of Air Supply poses for a photograph with his two dogs at his home in Kamas on Monday, Nov. 5, 2018. | Qiling Wang, Deseret News

“Sometimes (you) make decisions on the spur of the moment and you just feel it’s right, and instead of feeling worried you get excited about it,” he previously told the Deseret News. “We were very excited. It was an adventure and it is one that’s still ongoing.”

Russell is active in his local music scene — he composed a musical about the Berlin Wall that premiered at Salt Lake City’s Grand Theatre in 2019, and has been mentoring singers in Utah.

Brandon Flowers

Brandon Flowers hails from Henderson, Nevada, but lived much of his youth in Nephi — an upbringing that was a major influence behind The Killers’ album “Pressure Machine.”

“Many memories of my time in Nephi are tender,” Flowers, who several years ago moved back to Utah with his family, told RadioX in 2021. “But the ones tied to fear or great sadness were emotionally charged. I’ve got more understanding now than when we started the band, and hopefully, I was able to do justice to these stories and these lives in this little town that I grew up in.”

The Used

Several years before a band out of Provo, Utah, called Neon Trees burst onto the scene with the pop-rock song “Animal” and an up-and-coming group named Imagine Dragons had an EP release party at Provo’s Velour, a few guys in the neighboring city of Orem were recording demos in a closet, influenced by the grungy sound of Nirvana.

Bert McCracken of The Used performs at the Rock On The Range Music Festival at Mapfre Stadium on Sunday, May 20, 2018, in Columbus, Ohio. | Amy Harris, Invision via Associated Press

Those musicians, which included Utahns Bert McCracken and Quinn Allman, would become The Used. The band ended up only playing a handful of shows in Utah before catching its big break. Now, it’s celebrating 25 years of being a band with a tour that recently included a three-night stint in Salt Lake City.

“We’ve never shied away from where we came from,” McCracken told the Deseret News earlier this year. “It’s always been a bit of a point of pride for the band.”

Classical music and choir

Maurice Abravanel

Maurice Abravanel, as Carma Wadley wrote for the Deseret News in 2004, was looking for a home.

“The boy who was teased by Swiss children because of his Turkish/Greek origins, the student who was supposed to study medicine but was drawn to music instead, the musician who came to America to conduct the Metropolitan Opera orchestra but ended up on Broadway … found it in a place where he shared neither ethnic origin nor religion with most of the citizens, but where he found a common passion for music, for arts, for excellence.”

Deseret Morning News Archives

For 32 years, from 1947-1979, Abravanel served as the music director of the Utah Symphony, transforming it from a community ensemble into one of the leading orchestras in the country. That accomplishment is now honored in the symphony’s home that bears his name.

Gina Bachauer

Abravanel was close friends with Gina Bachauer. The pianist from Greece frequently performed with the Utah Symphony throughout her career, and was even made an honorary citizen of the state in 1966, per Deseret News.

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Today, Bachauer’s connection to Utah’s classical music community continues through the Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation, and the prestigious competition that brings top-tier pianists from all over the world to Salt Lake City.

Related Maurice Abravanel

Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square

The Tabernacle Choir formed less than one month after the pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, per Deseret News.

John Parry, the choir’s first director and an early Welsh convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, led 85 Welsh members of the church in several musical numbers at general conference in 1849, as the Deseret News reported.

Over the years, the choir has performed for a number of U.S. presidents — Ronald Reagan dubbed the group “America’s choir.“ The choir earned a Grammy in 1959 with its rendition of ”The Battle Hymn of the Republic,“ and established a global reach with the longstanding broadcast ”Music and The Spoken Word“ (July 13 will mark 5,000 weeks of continuous network broadcasting). The weekly program, which premiered July 15, 1929, was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2010.

Film and television

Utah is a popular destination for Westerns, Hallmark movies and Disney TV shows and films. Each year, the Sundance Film Festival brings cinephiles from all over the world to Park City and Salt Lake City (although that will end in 2027, when the festival makes its move to Boulder, Colorado).

Philo T. Farnsworth, who was born near Beaver, Utah, in the early 1900s, is credited with inventing the television.

Here’s perhaps a lesser-known fact: The first person to win an Oscar for best director, at the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1927, was Frank Borzage, a Salt Lake City native.

Utah’s history with film and television is extensive. Below are just a handful of filmmakers and actors who have strong ties to the state:

Robert Redford

Robert Redford moved from California to Utah in 1961, he said, for two reasons: the land and the people.

“I came here to be part of something,” he told the Deseret News in 1996. “It was a place where I could see a future. So I committed myself to this state and its future for my own sake and my children’s sake. That’s what brought me here.”

Robert Redford, founder and president of the Sundance Institute, talks to the media during the 2017 Sundance Film Festival’s annual Day One press conference at the Egyptian Theatre in Park City on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2017. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News

In Utah, Redford built a legacy inspired by independent filmmaking and environmental activism. He purchased the land now known as Sundance in 1969 (and sold it a few years ago), and helped launch the Sundance Film Festival, which for over 40 years has been a cultural touchstone for Utah.

Related Robert Redford fights on to preserve Utah

Jared and Jerusha Hess

It’s been an explosive year for director Jared Hess, who found a box office sensation with “A Minecraft Movie.” Like his debut film “Napoleon Dynamite” — which began to form when he was a Brigham Young University film student and would eventually go on to have a successful premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004 — influences from his Idaho upbringing are peppered throughout “Minecraft.”

But today, Jared Hess and Jerusha Hess, his wife and fellow filmmaker, call Utah home.

Jerusha Hess, left, and Jared Hess arrive at the Oscars on Sunday, March 10, 2024, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. | Jordan Strauss, Invision via Associated Press

Even as The Hesses take on blockbuster projects, they remain connected to their local community. The animated short “Ninety-Five Senses,” which earned the Hesses their first Oscar nomination last year, stemmed from the Salt Lake Film Society’s MAST program, an initiative that trains and pairs up-and-coming animators with established filmmakers.

Jared Hess has cited Utah filmmaker T.C. Christensen (“Ephraim’s Rescue” and “17 Miracles”) as a mentor and inspiration in his career.

Katherine Heigl

Katherine Heigl was just a teenager out of high school when she moved to the Los Angeles area, where she ended up living for two decades. After several years in Hollywood, the “27 Dresses” star realized she needed “somewhere to escape to.”

She found that space in Summit County, Utah. And over time, what initially was supposed to be a vacation spot became a home. Now, Heigl, well known for her role on “Grey’s Anatomy,” has said that residing in the small town of Oakley is “the right choice” for her family.

Katherine Heigl speaks at a press conference about gas chamber euthanasia of animals in shelters at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2023. Heigl, a longtime animal advocate, wants to see the end of gas chambers in Utah. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News

Mike Lookinland

Mike Lookinland, who played Bobby Brady on “The Brady Bunch,” was born in Mt. Pleasant, Sanpete County, Utah.

As a child star, he spent the majority of his youth in Hollywood. But after graduating from high school, he was ready for a change of scenery and returned to his Utah roots.

“I can say in retrospect that my move to Utah at the age of 17 … was an attempt to run away and get away, because in 1978, Utah wasn’t as established as it is now,” Lookinland told the Deseret News in 2019. “I wanted to get out of L.A., get away from agents and managers and Hollywood and just be a kid in the mountains. I went to the University of Utah and met my wife while we were both attending the U., and put down roots and haven’t even thought about going anywhere else. That’s how much we like it here.”

Today, Lookinland operates a custom concrete countertop business called Just Add Water in Midvale.

Wilford Brimley

Wilford Brimley, known for his roles in films like “The Natural,” “Absence of Malice” and “Cocoon,” was born in Salt Lake City and lived much of his life in Utah. He died in 2020 at the age of 85.

“Even his family says, ‘Wilford was Wilford Brimley from the time he was born to the time he died,’” Brimley’s friend, John Diehl, previously told the Deseret News. “He never changed for anyone. He never changed for the industry — he was who he was. He was his own man, and that says a lot for that industry, to stand fast on who you are.”

Tan France

Tan France, the fashion expert for the popular series “Queer Eye,” has had a home in Salt Lake City for well over a decade.

“I fly home to Utah as much as I possibly can. Sometimes I fly home for like 18 hours just to see the mountains again,” he said during a 2020 speech at UVU, per the Deseret News.

Ty Burrell

Ty Burrell, known for his role as dad Phil Dunphy on “Modern Family,” has had a home in Salt Lake City since 2008, per the Deseret News. The actor co-owns the Beer Bar restaurant and Bar X on 200 South in downtown Salt Lake; The Eating Establishment in Park City; and The Cotton Bottom in Holladay.

Ty Burrell participates in Fox’s Animation Domination panel for “Bless the Harts” and “Duncanville” at the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2019, in Beverly Hills, Calif. | Chris Pizzello, Associated Press

At the start of the pandemic, Burrell and his wife, Holly, a Utah native, wrote a check for $100,000 that helped establish the online fund Tip Your Server, which raised money for out-of-work servers in the local restaurant industry, as the Deseret News reported.

Laraine Day

Laraine Day appeared in almost two dozen MGM films between 1939 and 1945, per the Deseret News. Some of Day’s roles included the Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film “Foreign Correspondent” and the 1943 Cary Grant film “Mr. Lucky.”

Day was born in Roosevelt, Utah, one of eight children, and died at the age of 87 in Ivins.

Related Actress Laraine Day dies in Utah at 87

Loretta Young

Loretta Young, who was born in Salt Lake City in 1913, established a wide-ranging acting career that extended from silent movies to television, and included an Academy Award for best actress in the 1947 film “The Farmer’s Daughter.”

“During her Hollywood heyday, Young appeared opposite most of the top male stars of her time, including Lon Chaney, John Barrymore, Clark Gable, James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant and Robert Mitchum,” The Associated Press reported.

Deseret Morning News Archives

Roseanne Barr

Comedian Roseanne Barr was born in Salt Lake City and attended East High, per the Deseret News. Barr has returned to Utah several times over the years, including in 2018, shortly after the hit revival of “Roseanne” got canceled.

Gedde Watanabe

Actor Gedde Watanabe, known for his role in “Sixteen Candles” and voicing the character Ling in “Mulan” and “Mulan II,” was born and raised in Ogden. His mother sewed costumes for productions at Weber State University (then Weber State College), and Watanabe’s first stage appearance was in the school’s production of “The King and I,” per the Deseret News.

Dance and theater

The dance and theater scenes in Utah are lively — the state gets tons of representation on shows like “Dancing With the Stars” and “So You Think You Can Dance.”

Two dancers with ties to Utah have won “SYTYCD,” and Utahn Thayne Jasperson, an original “Hamilton” cast member on Broadway who has been with the production for the entire 10 years, competed on the show back in 2008.

Playhouses are peppered throughout the state, from Tuacahn in southern Utah to the Hale Theatre in Sandy to Ogden’s Ziegfeld Theater.

Below are a few key figures in Utah’s dance and theater scene:

Willam Christensen

Willam F. Christensen, a Brigham City native and pioneer in American dance, staged the first complete performance of “The Nutcracker” in the United States with the San Fransisco Ballet in 1944.

Christensen, who established Ballet West in 1963, worked with Abravanel and the Utah Symphony to bring “The Nutcracker” to Salt Lake City. It has been a Ballet West staple ever since.

Last year, “The Nutcracker” officially became known as a Living Historic Landmark by the state of Utah, the first such designation of its kind in the U.S., per the company’s website.

“I had no idea ‘The Nutcracker’ would become the thing it is today,” Christensen told the Deseret News in 2000. “I just thought I was doing something good by creating it. But I didn’t know how big it would turn out to be. I’d like to think I did a good deed with all this.”

Christensen taught at the University of Utah, where he founded the ballet department, and choreographed more than 50 ballets.

20151210 Mother Buffoon makes her entrance during a performance of Ballet West’s “The Nutcracker” at the Janet Quinney Lawson Capitol Theatre in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015. This year, Ballet West is celebrating the 60th anniversary of Willam Christensen’s iconic ballet. It runs through Dec. 27. | Ravell Call, Deseret News

Derek and Julianne Hough

Siblings and dance stars Derek and Julianne Hough both hail from Utah. Growing up, the Houghs trained at Center Stage Performing Arts Studio in Orem — which has produced a number of award-winning dancers who have appeared on shows like “So You Think You Can Dance” and “World of Dance.”

IMAGE DISTRIBUTED FOR THE TELEVISION ACADEMY – Derek Hough with their Emmy for outstanding choreography for variety or reality programming for “Dancing With The Stars” in the press room during night two of the Television Academy’s 75th Creative Arts Emmy Awards at the Peacock Theater on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Dan Steinberg/Invision for the Television Academy/AP Images) | Dan Steinberg/Invision/Associated Press

Both siblings have been mainstays on “Dancing With the Stars,” but they return to their home state on occasion for performances. And their father, Bruce Hough— who was on the ballroom dance team at Brigham Young University-Idaho — has stayed in Utah and was vying to fill Rep. Chris Stewart’s 2nd Congressional District seat in 2023.

Virginia Tanner

Virginia Tanner, or “Miss Virginia” to her students, was born in 1915 and grew up in Salt Lake City. After studying in New York City in the late 1930s, Tanner returned to Utah and began to teach dance in the original Deseret Gymnasium, built in 1910 and located where the Church Office Building now stands, per Deseret News.

Tanner established the Children’s Dance Theatre at the University of Utah and helped form Repertory Dance Theatre in 1966.

Fred Adams

Thirty years after his birth in Cedar City, Fred Adams established a festival that would transformed the tiny Utah town into a major arts destination.

A pioneer in Utah’s arts scene, Adams founded the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 1961 with his wife, Barbara Gaddie Adams. A big inspiration in creating the festival — aside from boosting Cedar City’s economy and providing activities for summer tourists — was to build upon the arts legacy that Utah’s earliest pioneers left behind.

Lee Benson

“Right from the beginning, when it was the state of Deseret, Brigham Young was promoting quality theater,” Adams told the Deseret News in 2014. “I think probably as important as any (reason for founding the festival) was to keep alive this passion that the early settlers had in the arts, in classical music, in classical literature and especially in the writings of William Shakespeare.”

The festival received the Tony Award for outstanding regional theater in 2000.

Will Swenson

Broadway star Will Swenson, who is married to six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald and starred in Latter-day Saint comedy films from the early 2000s like “The Singles Ward” and “The R.M.,” comes from the legacy theater family that established The Hale Center Theater in Orem, which relocated to Pleasant Grove last year as The Ruth and Nathan Hale Theater.

Will Swenson, a cast member of “A Beautiful Noise, The Neil Diamond Musical”, performs at the 76th annual Tony Awards on Sunday, June 11, 2023, at the United Palace theater in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP) | Charles Sykes/Invision/Associated Press

Swenson was 12 when his family moved to Utah to start the Hale Theater with his grandparents — and the family actually lived in the theater for six months, per the Deseret News.

Swenson’s Broadway roles have included “110 in the Shade,” “Hair,” “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” “Les Miserables” and “Waitress.” Most recently, he starred as Neil Diamond in the jukebox musical “A Beautiful Noise.”

Authors

Several authors sought to capture life in the American West, Utah included. Below are some key writers who have helped bring the Beehive State to life for readers:

Wallace Stegner

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Wallace Stegner covered the vast American West in his writings — and Utah was never too far from his mind.

Stegner attended East High and studied creative writing and literature at the University of Utah, where he later taught in the 1930s, per Deseret News.

Jerry Mosey, ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Deseret News previously reported how Stegner called Utah home in his essay “At Home in the Fields of the Lord,” despite spending most of his adult life away:

“I have always envied people with a hometown. … That is why I have been astonished, on a couple of recent trips through Salt Lake City, to find a conviction growing in me that I am not as homeless as I had thought. At worst, I had thought myself an Ishmael; at best, a half stranger in the city where I had lived the longest, a Gentile in New Jerusalem. But a dozen years of absence from Zion, broken only by two or three short revisitings, have taught me different. I am as rich in a hometown as anyone.”

Edward Abbey

An occasional Utah resident who lived in Moab, Logan and Green River, Edward Abbey had a “fierce love” for southern Utah — and a determined commitment to defend that land — that he expressed in several books and essays, per Deseret News.

Abbey’s books are prominently featured at the Back of Beyond bookstore in Moab (“Desert Solitaire” is one of the store’s most popular books). The store is dedicated to writings about the West.

Back of Beyond Books in Moab is pictured as the sun rises on Thursday, March 31, 2022. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News

“Ed has done much to help forge a new land ethic for Utah and a new aesthetic in land appreciation for a whole generation of Americans,” reads a piece in the Deseret News following Abbey’s death in 1989. “His message: leave it alone, take pride in knowing the wilderness is still there.”

Related How a bookstore in the desert shaped Western literature

Terry Tempest Williams

Back in 1983, before her writing career took off, Terry Tempest Williams spoke to the Deseret News about her approach.

“The key,” she said, “is to see nature in a fresh light, see predictable things in an unpredictable way.”

Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

The Utah-based author and naturalist, who grew up in Salt Lake City, rose to fame with her 1991 memoir “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place.” That same year, Newsweek called Williams ”one of the West’s most striking new writers.” Over the years, Williams has written about the American West, spirituality and her advocacy for environmental conservation.

Fantasy writers

Utah is also a hotspot for fantasy writing, including the following authors:

Blockbuster fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson calls American Fork home, and is heavily involved in his community. Last year, at the FanX convention in Salt Lake City, he announced plans for a local bookstore and read from an upcoming book.

He has given lectures at his alma mater Brigham Young University — where he was roommates with “Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings for a time — and is the inspiration behind the annual Dragonsteel convention in Salt Lake City.

Other fantasy writers who live in Utah include Brandon Mull, author of the “Fablehaven” and “Dragonwatch” series; Ally Condie, author of the young adult dystopian trilogy “Matched,” and whose novel, “The Unwedding,” caught the attention of Reese Witherspoon last year; and Shannon Hale, author of the Newbery Honor recipient “Princess Academy,” and the novel “Austenland,” which inspired the 2013 film of the same name.

Author Ally Condie poses for photos in Provo on Friday, June 14, 2024. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News

“People always ask me, ‘What’s in the water in Utah?’” Condie told the Deseret News last year, citing the popularity of young adult and middle-grade novels. “In Utah, I think we’re great about reading all through our lives. I hope that’s something we keep as a community and that we keep ourselves open to all kinds of literature.”

Artists

There is no shortage of artists in Utah. A vast number of artists depict the landscapes of the West and the pioneers’ journey across the plains.

Several also created murals and other notable artwork for Latter-day Saint temples, including John Hafen, LeConte Stewart, John B. Fairbanks and his son, Avard Fairbanks, whose work includes the bronze cougar near LaVell Edwards Stadium in Provo.

Here is a sampling of some prominent artists with strong ties to Utah:

Jann Haworth

Jann Haworth lived in England for 35 years before making her home in Utah.

In England, she and her then-husband Peter Blake crossed paths with the Beatles and were commissioned to design the iconic “Sgt. Pepper” album cover, the Deseret News previously reported.

Greggory Dikes, Deseret News

She was 24 when she began working on “Sgt. Pepper,” a project that would earn her a Grammy in 1967.

Decades later, in Utah, Haworth began considering the possibility of reimagining the “Sgt. Pepper” album cover by creating a mural in downtown Salt Lake City titled “SLC Pepper” that celebrates scientific advancement over celebrity.

Charles Roscoe Savage

Charles Roscoe Savage, a 19th-century photographer who lived in Salt Lake City for most of his life, “tracked the growth of this small Western town as it became a major American city … a visual record of a modern metropolis rising from the desert,” Joe Marotta wrote in a piece for Deseret Magazine.

Savage is perhaps most known for his 1869 photos that capture the linking of the first transcontinental railroad at Promontory Point.

Related Window on a hill

C.C.A. Christensen

One of C.C.A. Christensen’s most notable works, “Mormon Panaroma,” came to life in Utah, where he emigrated from Denmark after joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The series of more than 20 oil-on-canvas paintings tells the early history of the church.

“His is probably the most original and earliest expression of Mormon art,” Anthony Christensen, owner of Anthony’s Fine Art and Antiques, told the Deseret News in 2010.

Related Rare old Mormon paintings surface at Salt Lake gallery

Cyrus Dallin

Cyrus Dallin, a sculptor from Springville, was 29 and had just returned to Utah in July 1891 after seven years at school back East when President Wilford Woodruff of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proposed a commission: create the angel statue for the nearly completed Salt Lake Temple.

Photo by Scott G Winterton, Deseret News

Dallin was skeptical about the project, but ultimately decided to do it after some convincing from his mother, per the Deseret News.

“I consider that my ‘Angel Moroni’ brought me nearer to God than anything I ever did,” he said of the commission, per Deseret News. “It seemed to me that I came to know what it means to commune with angels from heaven.”

Minerva Teichert

Born in North Ogden, Minerva Teichert became an accomplished artist who won first place in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ centennial art contest — a success that ultimately led her to become the first woman to paint a temple mural, the Deseret News reported.

In 1947, Tiechert painted a nearly 4,000-square-foot mural in the Manti Utah Temple. She continued to paint Latter-day Saint-themed art throughout her life, including 42 paintings that depict stories from the Book of Mormon.

Pilar Pobil

Pilar Pobil’s largest piece of artwork, a 12-foot painting, hangs in the foyer of the humanities building at the University of Utah.

The acclaimed painter from Spain came to Salt Lake City in 1957. Pobil often opened her brightly-colored home in the Avenues neighborhood to young students, fellow artists and the community, hosting fundraising events, art classes and the annual event, Art in Pilar’s Garden.

In a feature on PBSUtah, Pobil’s daughter shared her belief that art saved her mother from tragedy in early life — the artist was 9 years old when her father was killed in the Spanish Civil War.

The legacy of Pobil, who died last year at the age of 98, lives on in a humanities scholarship that bears her name at the University of Utah. Her works are on display throughout the state.