The Church has announced that January 16, 2006 is the last day to see the Joseph Smith bicentennial exhibit at the Museum of Church History and Art before it heads back into the vaults. (Original plans were to close on January 15.)

To quote the church announcement:

Curator Mark Staker describes the exhibit as “a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” and encourages visitors not to wait until the last minute to see this unique collection of historic materials.

“Many of the artifacts and documents on exhibit have never been shown publicly before. Because of their fragile condition, it will likely be many years before they are exhibited again,” Staker said.

This reminds me a bit of those Disney commercials that inform/warn/threaten little children that they have one week to ask/plead with/manipulate/swindle their parents to buy “Beauty and Beast: The Mindnumbing Office Christmas Party 3 1/2″ before it heads back into the Disney vaults forever! (Or at least until next Christmas.)

The exhibit includes an original Book of Mormon manuscript page containing Joseph Smith’s handwriting, manuscripts of revelations, a Smith family record book, letters, clothing, fragments from the Nauvoo Temple baptismal font and Liberty Jail, and other artifacts (further information is available here).

I haven’t seen the exhibit and have no plans to visit the museum in the next few months (unfortunately, the exhibit is not available for online viewing), so here’s hoping that I’m still kicking in, say, 2030, the church’s bicentennial, when the vaults reopen.

If you do go, I hope you have a better time than Nathaniel Hawthorne did when he visited London’s British Museum in late March 1856.

On a similar front, BYU’s Special Collections will be opening a Joseph Smith exhibit on December 8 that features first editions of the Book of Mormon, the Book of Commandments, Doctrine and Covenants, and first-run editions of the early Mormon newspapers, The Evening and the Morning Star, The Latter-day Saints Messenger and Advocate, and The Times and Seasons. The exhibit will continue through next April.