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Sunday, March 1 | 11:00a -11:30aIncluded with general admission. No registration is required.
At 1275 feet, the Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage 'Round the World is the longest painting in the United States. The panorama is stored on four large rolls. Due to their size, and time it takes to change these rolls, MMAM curators and staff must change them while the museum is closed. But before they can be changed, the rolls must be rewound back to the beginning. Join us for a behind-the-scenes viewing of the panorama in motion as the second of the four rolls is rewound to the beginning on Sunday, March 1 at 11:00a. This will be your only chance to see the entirety of this 325-foot section of the panorama in one sitting! MMAM curators will narrate the scene as it unfolds…in reverse.
About the Exhibition:
In 1848, New Bedford artists Benjamin Russell and Caleb Purrington announced to the world they had completed their Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World. Russell was an emerging artist and bankrupt whaling investor who had just spent 42 months (1841-1844) on a whaling voyage to the Indian Ocean and North Pacific aboard the ship Kutusoff. When he returned, Purrington joined him in creating this massive painting as a commercial enterprise for public entertainment. Performed as a moving panorama, this 1,275-foot long and 8-foot high painting was separated onto four alternating spools, which were mounted in a theater or public hall for a paid performance. It toured the East, transported by train, ship, and wagon to Boston, New York and as far West as St. Louis.
In an era before the age of cinema, the Panorama is a rare extant example of commercial enterprise, designed to exploit the panorama craze of the 19th century with tales of the high seas. This era’s popular entertainment was dominated by illusion and spectacle, the exotic and the unknown. This was the age of the traveling circus, public theater, pantomimes, the height of popularity of the curiosities sideshow, and the birth of grand World’s Fairs.
The Panorama, which is owned and preserved by the New Bedford Whaling Museum, depicts in fascinating detail the voyage of a typical mid-19th century New Bedford whaleship on its journey ‘round the world’ in pursuit of whales. Along the way, it depicts scenes (some from Russell’s experience, some historic, and some imagined) in such far-flung places as the Azores, Cape Verde, Brazil, Tahiti, and Hawaii. People, places, vessels, wildlife, and events spring to life as they were seen from a 19th-century perspective.
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