The original 'big screen' is reborn

The New Bedford Whaling Museum exhibits America’s longest painting in its entirety for the first time in more than a half-century.

By Christy Nadalin
Posted 7/29/18

Resisting the urge to express the size of the 1,275-foot "Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World", painted in 1848 by Benjamin Russell and Caleb Purrington, in "Rhode Islands,"* …

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The original 'big screen' is reborn

The New Bedford Whaling Museum exhibits America’s longest painting in its entirety for the first time in more than a half-century.

Posted

Resisting the urge to express the size of the 1,275-foot "Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World", painted in 1848 by Benjamin Russell and Caleb Purrington, in "Rhode Islands,"* just know that it's big.

It's 14-blue-whales, 4-Statue-of-Liberties, one-Empire-State-Buildings big.
And if you don't believe that — if you have to see it for yourself to believe it — you can. It's on display right in downtown New Bedford, and it's a sight that has not been seen for generations.

Painter Russell collaborated with local sign painter Purrington; together they spent a year creating the work, with Purrington creating the background and Russell fleshing out the details. Painted with a keen attention to accurate detail, the panorama is considered to be a valuable record of New Bedford and the whaling industry.

But why on earth would anyone create a painting so large? Because the desire to see moving pictures, so to speak, predated the technology to create film as we (or our grandparents) knew it. The Grand Panorama actually traveled the country where it was displayed on massive scrolls accompanied by music and narration.

It was donated to the New Bedford Whaling Museum in 1918 by Benjamin Cummings, a New Bedford grocer, though it is not clear how Cummings came to own the painting. It was most recently displayed on the road at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. But time took its toll on the massive cotton canvas.

Known to be the longest painting in the United States, and thought to be the longest in the world, bringing it back to exhibition form would be no small task, one undertaken after nearly two decades of efforts to conserve it failed to slow the deterioration to the satisfaction of Whaling Museum curators.

The arrival of cinema (and manageable-sized film) heralded the end of the moving panorama. Most were sliced into smaller paintings or used as theater backdrops, if they found a second life at all. Challenges like transportation and appropriate storage make the fact that this panorama survived long enough to be saved especially unique.

In an interview prior to the start of the project, Jordan Berson, the museum’s director of collections and head of the panorama conservation project, noted that “there are tears, holes, and several sections were cut out. These are all being reintegrated back into their original order."

It took more than 3 years to painstakingly restore the remaining 4 segments of the 5-segment work. The 5th segment was lost or destroyed before the Whaling Museum obtained the painting a century ago.

With the restoration complete, the public can enjoy it through two exhibitions: “A Spectacle in Motion: The Original” and “A Spectacle in Motion: The Experience.” “The Original” runs through October 8 and features the entire panorama on display at the historic Kilburn Mill in New Bedford, free and open to the public.

The second exhibition, “The Experience,” will feature a digital reproduction of the panorama in motion, as audiences would have experienced ii when it was on the road in the mid-19th century. This exhibition opens July 29 and will run through 2021 at the Whaling Museum.

“Seeing the Panorama in its entirety as a work of art, as well as experiencing it in motion, will be one of the most singular and spectacular American folk art milestones of this era,” said Dr. Christina Connett, Whaling Museum Chief Curator. “It is an artwork of national historical importance and a keystone that defines our region’s role in maritime heritage.”

For more information on the panorama and its exhibitions, please visit WhalingMuseum.org.

*The state of Rhode Island is 199 panoramas long and 153 panoramas wide.

Whaling Museum, panaorama

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