Paige had the day off from school on Monday and we decided to get tickets to the Sacred Gifts exhibit at the BYU Museum of Art. We went with my mom and made a day of it. If you have an opportunity to go, you should. These paintings are on loan from several locations, mostly churches, and they are all depictions of the Savior. The altar pieces take some time to study. There are paintings by Carl Bloch, Heinrich Hoffmann, and Frans Schwartz.
I realized that I had never seen real art before. I have visited community and university museums all of my life, but never felt what I did at this exhibit. Part of it was the subject matter and seeing original paintings rather than the washed out prints I have looked at all my life. The paintings were luminous and vibrant in color. I could see the foreground of the paintings were painted differently than the backgrounds. I could see the “spectators” in Bloch’s paintings more clearly. My favorite was the first painting, Frans Schwartz’s Agony in the Garden. It touched me deeply.
One caption near a painting by Heinrich Hofmann told of the inadequacy that Hofmann felt when he began painting the Savior. The painting took him two years to complete, and the writer of the caption emphasized the courage it took for Hofmann to paint, despite his youth, inexperience, and the immense subject matter he was trying to depict.
I think that’s the message that I needed to hear this week. Even though we may feel inadequate, our time and talents given to others can become sacred gifts, and they can be magnified in quality when we give with a pure heart.