The most significant addition to the Museum of Church History and Art since its opening on April 4, 1984, will be unveiled soon, and will provide visitors with the opportunity to stroll through 160 years of Church history.

"A Covenant Restored: the Foundations of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" is planned for an opening in late spring, according to Glen M. Leonard, museum director.

The exhibit will occupy the entire main level gallery and will be a permanent feature at the museum.

"Completion of the new gallery fulfills our hope of providing access to a fascinating past," Leonard said. "We will continue our program of changing exhibits using other artifacts and art from the museum's considerable collection, but for many visitors the exhibit on Church history will be the one that gives the museum its distinctive identity."

The new exhibit will feature some of the artifacts many Latter-day Saints will remember from the Temple Square museum, which was closed in 1976 to make way for the South Visitors Center. Such items as pages from the original Book of Mormon manuscript and the press on which the book was originally printed, the pocket watch that stopped a bullet from piercing the chest of John Taylor at the time of Joseph Smith's martyrdom, and the death masks of Joseph and Hyrum Smith will be displayed.

But the new exhibit will be much more than just an assemblage of artifacts. It will include models, maps, paintings, documents and reconstructions.

"Museums nationally have shifted from the display of their entire collections to interpretive, educational exhibits," Leonard explained. "This exhibit will be interpretive and educational, and will include a selection of artifacts that support the story line. Since the purpose of this museum is to educate visitors on the history of the Church, this exhibit becomes the centerpiece of the museum's offerings to the public."

For the past two years skilled artisans have been installing such life-size items as the facade of an 1830s log cabin, another facade of the Nauvoo Temple using stone from the original temple, a chapel entryway, a window from the Kirtland Temple, a piece of the original ZCMI storefront from early Salt Lake City, a covered wagon complete with a working odometer replicating the one designed by pioneer William Clayton, and a reproduction of the " 'tween-decks" portion of a typical immigrant ship on which converts to the Church would have sailed to the United States in the 1800s.

Hands-on experience will be encouraged. Visitors will be allowed to climb into the bunks of the ship section to understand how it would have felt to have lived onboard ship. They may also climb into the covered wagon, which is accurately reproduced, including the exact shades of blue and orange with which the beds and wheels of the pioneers' covered wagons were painted.

Miniature as well as life-size elements will help tell the story of the Restoration. Two scale models typify the thoroughness with which the exhibit has been assembled. One depicts Salt Lake City in 1870, including the Salt Lake Tabernacle and the beginnings of the Salt Lake Temple. The model was painstakingly constructed from historical photographs, insurance maps and other documents, Leonard said.

The other model shows the Joseph Smith Farm in September of 1827, with buildings and landmarks placed according to the best documentary and archaeological evidence.

Another miniature item expected to intrigue visitors is a scale model of the Enoch Train, a packet ship used by Mormon emigrants to sail from Liverpool, England, in 1857. Leonard said it is the most authentic ship model of its size in the world. Even the tiny ropes are woven authentically, he noted.

The exhibit includes a 12-foot-high, computer-driven map showing settlement by Church members of the Mountain West. By pressing buttons, visitors can illuminate tiny red lights on the map pinpointing 725 Mormon settlements as they progressed period by period from 1847 to 1930.

Leonard pointed out that the new exhibit uses the best techniques of prominent museums: reconstruction such as in Colonial Williamsburg; environmental settings as used in the Provincial Museum in British Columbia; audio-visual experience like that of the Chicago Historical Society museum; and interactive displays as in Brooklyn's Children's Museum.

When finished, the gallery will appear to be a carpeted pathway through a small city. Visitors will proceed through four sections: "Restoring the Covenant;" "Gathering to Zion: the Epic Quest of a Covenant People;" "Building Zion: Living the Covenant at Home, at Work and at Worship;" and "A Covenant Shared."

Unifying the exhibit are the concepts of revelation and personal testimony, Leonard said. Those concepts are illustrated in particular at the beginning and end of the gallery tour. It begins with displays of temple reconstructions and exhibits relating to Joseph Smith's First Vision, and it ends with displays about temple worship, proclaiming the gospel to the world, and the international nature of the Church membership.