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From the NEPA (Northeastern Pennsylvania) News
Gettysburg restoration projects aim to bring painting, park back to life
The Associated Press December 21, 2003
For nearly 120 years, Paul D. Philippoteaux's gripping tableau of the Battle of Gettysburg has brought to life a watershed moment in American history: the Union Army stand on Cemetery Ridge that marked the beginning of the end of the Confederacy.
These days a small army of historians, art conservators, engineers and commercial artists is on a campaign of its own, a $9 million effort to breathe new life into the faded and water-damaged oil painting.
When it is finished and installed inside a new building, tentatively scheduled for late 2006, an even more ambitious restoration will involve tearing down the Cyclorama Center and the current visitor center so the epicenter of the battlefield can be returned to something closer to its July 1863 condition.
Designed in cycloramic format for viewers to stand at the center of a 360-degree image, Philippoteaux's 1884 "The Battle of Gettysburg" _ longer than a football field and the height of a five-story building _ was a commercial smash hit when it was first installed in a custom building in Boston.
Before the National Park Service purchased it in 1942, the painting was shipped around the country, survived two storage-shed fires, was sliced into sections for display at a New Jersey department store and had more than 20 feet hacked off its top.
"The 'old' and the 'damaged,' is typical. We expect that," said David L. Olin, the Virginia-based conservator leading the restoration project with partner Perry Huston. "But here, you're dealing with a very large _ very, very large _ work of art."
In its original form, the painting is believed to have measured an estimated 400 feet long and 50 feet high, and was displayed along with an integrated diorama that further heightened the sense of complete immersion in the scene. The canvas had a hyperbolic shape _ think of the cooling towers at a nuclear reactor _ and was hung with specially fabricated iron rings.
What remains today is considerably smaller _ 365 feet long and 27 feet high _ and most of what had been the sky is gone. The canvas is buckled from the effects of humidity and from being reduced in size and hung like a shower curtain.
Past repair efforts have painted over some of the original artwork. It is currently displayed as a flat image on a circular wall, and viewers stand several feet lower than they should to provide the proper perspective.
Olin's team has started the first phase of actual restoration by focusing on two of the 27 panels, a pair of 13-foot sections from the work's most damaged area. Those panels are being cleaned, "repaint" from previous repairs is being removed and loose paint is being stabilized before they will be taken down, rolled up and driven to a facility near Dulles Airport in Virginia, 50 miles away.
There, the conservators will remove animal glue, wax and several layers of added material previously applied to give the canvas more body. What remains will be placed on specially designed work tables that Olin hopes will allow the canvas to settle back into its original shape. If the approach succeeds, work on the rest of the painting will be performed in Gettysburg.
After the cleaned, stabilized canvas is reinstalled in a gallery inside a new multimillion visitor center and museum, the finishing touches will be added with new paint filling in spots of damage and recreating the missing portion of sky. A new diorama that adds fence rails and other objects in the foreground also will be constructed.
The cyclorama painting rehabilitation is part of an ambitious $95 million, 15-year project aimed at improving the Gettysburg battlefield, a national icon visited by nearly two million visitors annually.
The makeover is a partnership between the National Park Service and the nonprofit Gettysburg National Battlefield Museum Foundation. Its centerpiece is construction of a combined $16 million visitor center and $29 million museum _ with fresh exhibits, two theaters, a library and classroom space _ more than a half-mile from the current visitor center on a 47-acre parcel that saw no major battle action.
So far the foundation has received donor commitments of $41 million. Groundbreaking is scheduled for the end of 2004.
The new facilities will permit the park to tear down the Cyclorama Center, which was erected in 1962 in connection with the battle's centennial observances. Its flat roof is plagued by leaks and the poured-concrete walls have sprouted minute stress fractures, allowing humidity to penetrate and damage some of the park's collection of 38,000 irreplaceable artifacts as well as Philippoteaux's painting.
It's also located in just about the worst possible spot, on Cemetery Ridge smack between the headquarters of Union commander Gen. George Gordon Meade and the spot where Pickett's Charge was repulsed on the battle's third day, the so-called High Water Mark of the Confederacy.
Also slated for demolition is the visitor center, a three-level red brick residence the Park Service purchased from the family that had operated it for 50 years as a museum, and the associated parking lots. And the park has plans to erect battle-era fences and restore orchards, farm fields and woods to their 1863 condition.
With help from the Park Service, the foundation will operate the new museum and visitor center for 20 years, after which it will donate the land and buildings, debt-free, to the federal government.
As for the cyclorama painting, which reportedly drew tears from Civil War veterans who viewed it in the 1880s, Olin said he hopes visitors will experience similar emotions when they see it in its original glory.
"My hope is that with the painting properly conserved and installed, that just for a moment the viewer will feel that they're actually in the battle," Olin said. "Relatively speaking."
___
On the Net:
Gettysburg National Battlefield Museum Foundation:
Gettysburg National Military Park:
Gettysburg restoration projects aim to bring painting, park back to life
The Associated Press December 21, 2003
For nearly 120 years, Paul D. Philippoteaux's gripping tableau of the Battle of Gettysburg has brought to life a watershed moment in American history: the Union Army stand on Cemetery Ridge that marked the beginning of the end of the Confederacy.
These days a small army of historians, art conservators, engineers and commercial artists is on a campaign of its own, a $9 million effort to breathe new life into the faded and water-damaged oil painting.
When it is finished and installed inside a new building, tentatively scheduled for late 2006, an even more ambitious restoration will involve tearing down the Cyclorama Center and the current visitor center so the epicenter of the battlefield can be returned to something closer to its July 1863 condition.
Designed in cycloramic format for viewers to stand at the center of a 360-degree image, Philippoteaux's 1884 "The Battle of Gettysburg" _ longer than a football field and the height of a five-story building _ was a commercial smash hit when it was first installed in a custom building in Boston.
Before the National Park Service purchased it in 1942, the painting was shipped around the country, survived two storage-shed fires, was sliced into sections for display at a New Jersey department store and had more than 20 feet hacked off its top.
"The 'old' and the 'damaged,' is typical. We expect that," said David L. Olin, the Virginia-based conservator leading the restoration project with partner Perry Huston. "But here, you're dealing with a very large _ very, very large _ work of art."
In its original form, the painting is believed to have measured an estimated 400 feet long and 50 feet high, and was displayed along with an integrated diorama that further heightened the sense of complete immersion in the scene. The canvas had a hyperbolic shape _ think of the cooling towers at a nuclear reactor _ and was hung with specially fabricated iron rings.
What remains today is considerably smaller _ 365 feet long and 27 feet high _ and most of what had been the sky is gone. The canvas is buckled from the effects of humidity and from being reduced in size and hung like a shower curtain.
Past repair efforts have painted over some of the original artwork. It is currently displayed as a flat image on a circular wall, and viewers stand several feet lower than they should to provide the proper perspective.
Olin's team has started the first phase of actual restoration by focusing on two of the 27 panels, a pair of 13-foot sections from the work's most damaged area. Those panels are being cleaned, "repaint" from previous repairs is being removed and loose paint is being stabilized before they will be taken down, rolled up and driven to a facility near Dulles Airport in Virginia, 50 miles away.
There, the conservators will remove animal glue, wax and several layers of added material previously applied to give the canvas more body. What remains will be placed on specially designed work tables that Olin hopes will allow the canvas to settle back into its original shape. If the approach succeeds, work on the rest of the painting will be performed in Gettysburg.
After the cleaned, stabilized canvas is reinstalled in a gallery inside a new multimillion visitor center and museum, the finishing touches will be added with new paint filling in spots of damage and recreating the missing portion of sky. A new diorama that adds fence rails and other objects in the foreground also will be constructed.
The cyclorama painting rehabilitation is part of an ambitious $95 million, 15-year project aimed at improving the Gettysburg battlefield, a national icon visited by nearly two million visitors annually.
The makeover is a partnership between the National Park Service and the nonprofit Gettysburg National Battlefield Museum Foundation. Its centerpiece is construction of a combined $16 million visitor center and $29 million museum _ with fresh exhibits, two theaters, a library and classroom space _ more than a half-mile from the current visitor center on a 47-acre parcel that saw no major battle action.
So far the foundation has received donor commitments of $41 million. Groundbreaking is scheduled for the end of 2004.
The new facilities will permit the park to tear down the Cyclorama Center, which was erected in 1962 in connection with the battle's centennial observances. Its flat roof is plagued by leaks and the poured-concrete walls have sprouted minute stress fractures, allowing humidity to penetrate and damage some of the park's collection of 38,000 irreplaceable artifacts as well as Philippoteaux's painting.
It's also located in just about the worst possible spot, on Cemetery Ridge smack between the headquarters of Union commander Gen. George Gordon Meade and the spot where Pickett's Charge was repulsed on the battle's third day, the so-called High Water Mark of the Confederacy.
Also slated for demolition is the visitor center, a three-level red brick residence the Park Service purchased from the family that had operated it for 50 years as a museum, and the associated parking lots. And the park has plans to erect battle-era fences and restore orchards, farm fields and woods to their 1863 condition.
With help from the Park Service, the foundation will operate the new museum and visitor center for 20 years, after which it will donate the land and buildings, debt-free, to the federal government.
As for the cyclorama painting, which reportedly drew tears from Civil War veterans who viewed it in the 1880s, Olin said he hopes visitors will experience similar emotions when they see it in its original glory.
"My hope is that with the painting properly conserved and installed, that just for a moment the viewer will feel that they're actually in the battle," Olin said. "Relatively speaking."
___
On the Net:
Gettysburg National Battlefield Museum Foundation:
Gettysburg National Military Park:
