Increasing Beauty in Zion: A Countercultural Idea

Increasing Beauty in Zion: A Countercultural Idea
Paul Monson
President of ICAA Utah Chapter
From an address given Thursday, March 29, 2018
at the inaugural Fine Art & Faith Symposium in Salt Lake City, Utah 

Philadelphia Pennsylvania Temple, Robert Boyd

Good morning. I’m grateful to be here. I express my thanks to Herman du Toit and to all of you. My comments and views are my own, not positions of the church. In my off hours, in between the responsibilities of temple designer, father, and husband, I run a non-profit chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art.

The ICAA is the largest national non-profit promoting the classical tradition in architecture and the allied arts. Here in Utah our website is Classicistutah.org where you can find a calendar of all our events. We post beautiful and useful things regularly to social media @ classicist Utah. We teach classes in Junior High through Universities and host lectures, tours, and events for the public to reflect on and learn from the past to create a more beautiful future.

My remarks today center around that word beauty – what it meant in the past and what it means today. I've titled this talk: Increasing Beauty in Zion: A Countercultural Idea. I'll only be able to poke at the surface a little bit, but – What is beauty, and why is it a countercultural idea? I'll start with a story.

To read more, click here: Paul Monson