Museum restores North America's longest painting
Museum restores North America's longest painting Restorations of the 1848 “Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ’Round the World.” (New Bedford Whaling Museum/Wiki Commons)
Museum restores North America's longest painting
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“Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage Round the World” is a big painting. It measures an impressive 1,275 feet long and is eight-and-a-half feet tall.

It was created in 1848 by Benjamin Russell and Caleb Purrington. It captures all aspects of a whaling voyage. That was at a time when the business of whaling was booming in the U.S. and around the world.

The absorbing artwork once toured the U.S. on wagons and trains. They stopped in Boston, Buffalo, New York, St. Louis among other cities on a national tour.

When displayed, a narrator told stories of hunting and processing whales. The panorama was mounted on a system of cranks and reels to go across a theater stage.

But the painting deteriorated from so much travel. Its paint started chipping, and so  the piece was put away in storage.

In what has been a 20-year effort, a team has restored the panorama. The painting is a quarter-mile-long. It is considered the longest painting in North America, according to Jennifer McDermott for the Associated Press.

The New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts poured $400,000 into the endeavor to conserve, digitize and store the panorama, according to Allison Meier of Hyperallergic. She reported on the project in February of 2017.

D. Jordan Berson, a textile conservator who’s managing the project, tells McDermott he sprayed an adhesive on the panorama to stabilize a paint layer that had powdered over time. He’s stitched sections that were taken apart, repaired thinning areas of the textile and fixed tears.

The museum is currently in the process of finding venue large enough to display the artwork. Because it will be shown as a static piece, the venue will need to be at least 16,000 square feet.

In an effort to mimic the original experience and show the panorama moving once again, every section of the piece has also been photographed and merged into a large digital display.

“It’s a national treasure that’s been out of the spotlight for too long,” Berson tells McDermont.

When it was last on tour, the painting might have been used a recruiting tool. At the time, whaling crews were losing young men to the Gold Rush. But when they attended the touring exhibitions, audience members would see images of far-away destinations they had likely never traveled to, like Cape Horn and Fiji. It was sure to excite their imaginations, Michael Dyer, the museum+’s curator of maritime history tells McDermott.

Berson said he hopes that the storied panorama will eventually return to tour some of the cities it once visited.

This time, rather than recruiting anyone, one imagines the behemoth artwork will likely provoke a new conversation on the artwork and the history of commercial whaling. (The ban on which was only issued by the International Whaling Commission in 1986.)

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Why was the museum restoring the painting?
Write your answers in the comments section below

  • Maryr-bru1
    1/05/2018 - 03:29 p.m.

    The museum was restoring the paint because the painting was starting to chip off pieces of paint.As pictures get older they start to deteriorate away. One of the steps to deteriorating away is paint chipping and things falling off of the piece. So the Museum decided to put the painting in a safe place to keep so there wouldn't be more of a chance to break the piece.

  • AllanM-dec
    1/18/2018 - 11:10 a.m.

    It was actually a good piece of art work. That is why I think it is good that they restored it. Now people can see what the painting looked liked in it first state.

  • AMANDAM-vms
    1/18/2018 - 10:07 p.m.

    They restored it so maybe one day it could travel again like it use to.

  • KarliM-dec
    1/24/2018 - 08:12 a.m.

    My opinion on this article is that it is very cool and interesting. The painting was 1,275 feet long and 8.5 feet high. On the tour they stopped at four cities including Boston, Buffalo, New York, and St. Louis. The New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts poured $400,000 into the painting to restore it in their museum. Finally, it took around 20 years for a team to restore the panorama.

  • TylerF-dec
    1/31/2018 - 10:18 a.m.

    This painting is the longest painting in North America. It travel all around North America. I think they put it to a stop just in case it gets ruined or something like that.

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