The Church History Museum in Salt Lake City has opened a new exhibition titled “From Above: Aboriginal Australian Art From the Bird Family.” The show features works by Indigenous Australian artists from the Anmatyerr culture who are also members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The artists, including Gary Bird Mpetyane, Maggie Bird Mpetyane, and Rose Coleena Wallace Nungari, traveled from Australia to attend the opening of the exhibit, which runs through August 1, 2026.
This exhibition is significant for its unique fusion of traditional Aboriginal artistic techniques—such as dot painting, U-shaped symbols, and bird's-eye perspectives—with Latter-day Saint iconography and theology. By adapting the concept of "Dreaming" to depict events like Joseph Smith’s First Vision, the Bird family demonstrates how Indigenous cultural identity and religious faith can intersect, providing a rare cross-cultural dialogue within the context of contemporary religious art.