New Bedford Whaling Museum experts explain the significance of America’s longest painting

Posted 8/6/18

Experts will give a series of lectures in August about America’s longest painting, the Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World, which is featured in two New Bedford Whaling …

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New Bedford Whaling Museum experts explain the significance of America’s longest painting

Posted

Experts will give a series of lectures in August about America’s longest painting, the Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World, which is featured in two New Bedford Whaling Museum exhibitions: “A Spectacle in Motion: The Original” and “A Spectacle in Motion: The Experience.”

All lectures begin at 7 pm, preceded by receptions beginning at 6 pm. Cost to attend is $10 for Whaling Museum members and $15 for non-members. Tickets can be purchased online at www.whalingmuseum.com or by calling 508-997-0046.


Tuesday, August 14
Industry of Whaling and Maritime Culture of Mid-19th Century America
At the New Bedford Whaling Museum
By Michael P. Dyer, Curator of Maritime History
Michael P. Dyer will examine the Panorama through an industrial lens. Benjamin Russell probably conceived his idea for a traveling whaling panorama picture show sometime between 1841, when he shipped onboard a whaler, and 1847, around the time when he and Caleb Purrington actually began to paint it. The painting coincided with the height of American whaling, both economically, physically, and culturally. The impacts of the whaling enterprise were felt through many segments of American society and its profits later funded the fine and mechanical arts, and local industries as divergent as banking, machine tool manufacturing, and cotton spinning. The growth of the industry demanded an American diplomatic presence in many faraway lands, advancing the vanguard of American hegemony in the Pacific.

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