Planning for the exhibit, "A Pillar of Light: Celebrating 200 Years of the First Vision," was five years in the making; from reserving the 870-square-foot exhibit space in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections in 2014, to the exhibit opening in fall 2019. As we planned our exhibit, our first objective was to teach our visitors something new. We prioritized exposure to all nine of the known First Vision accounts. This was paramount. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints published an

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... le to the web on the accounts several years before but we knew many BYU students and even faculty were not aware Joseph Smith shared his experience multiple times over the course of his life. One BYU faculty member shook his head and told us personally, "I had no idea there was more than one until I saw your exhibit." To set up the various accounts, we wanted to situate the vision in conversation with the greater American religious environment at the time. We also wanted to acknowledge how scholars and artists have engaged with the vision over the past two centuries. We wanted poetry and music centered on the First Vision to sit alongside critics and scholars of Joseph's accounts. This reception history naturally flowed into our second more important goal. We wanted our visitors to have a connection to the Sacred Grove-whether that was a recollection of a prior visit or a sense or feeling of what it might be like to visit there in person. We hoped this would be a space for visitors to reflect on what the First Vision meant to them personally.