July 5, 2023 - Wednesday - Today we were in Glendale, CA to visit the Forest Lawn Museum. The museum, in collaboration with the Velaslavasay Panorama, has a new exhibit called “Grand Views: The Immersive World of Panoramas.” This exhibition explores the history of panoramas, which is an immersive, large-scale artistic format popularized in the 18th and 19th centuries.
This is a vintage miniature moving panorama.
This broadsheet advertised a Civil War panorama, while the American Civil War was still raging!
Large panoramic paintings were hard to transport from city to city. Typically they were rolled onto telephone poles and then transported by truck. Panoramas displayed with a 360° view in a circular building sometimes measured 300' long by 50' high.
This is a specially built structure for having a 360° view panorama.
We plan to go to this panorama in August.
A centerpiece of the exhibition is the "Panorama of the Valley of the Smokes" (60 ft. x 5 ft.), painted by Sara Velas (Founder of the Velaslavasay Panorama) in the year 2000. This was originally exhibited in a circular theater.
It's a very interesting exhibit, specially since we'll be going to the real thing in a few weeks.
Unfortunately today's lunch was a bust. Judy's choice was just okay and mine was just terrible. You can't win 'em all. Hopefully our next adventure will have better food that's worth photographing.