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By Laurie
Williams Sowby
(click
on pictures below to enlarge)
Artist
C.C.A. Christensen hauled his huge paintings around the West, showing
them to the accompaniment of music and narration. More than a century
later, audiences can see the Latter-day Saint convert's performance
re-enacted two nights a week at the
Museum of Art at Brigham Young University.
Born Carl Christian
Christensen but known affectionately as "C.C.A.," the
Danish-born convert grew up in an orphanage where his innovative
cutouts for the Christmas tree impressed a prominent woman who paid
for his training at the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen.
Liberty Jail
Greater than his love
for art, was his zeal for the gospel when he was converted in 1850.
He served two missions before emigrating to the United States, but
on his third mission back to Denmark, his passion for art was rekindled.
Desiring to remind LDS youth of their heritage, he painted four
panoramas.
"History
will preserve much," he said, "but art alone can make
the narrative of the suffering of the Saints comprehensible for
posterity."
Tar and Feathering
The free live
performances on Monday evenings at 7:30 and Thursdays at 7 and 8
p.m. are similar to those which accompanied the showing of the "Mormon
Panorama" which traveled throughout Utah, Idaho, Arizona and
Wyoming in the late 1800s as the artist sought
to acquaint viewers with the history of the LDS Church through his
paintings.
BYU's exhibit,
titled "On the Road with C.C.A. Christensen: The Moving Panorama"
brings back a form of entertainment popular with the rising literate
middle class more than a century ago.
Sermon to the American Indians
Originating
in 1887 with Robert Baker's 360-degree painting presented in a rotunda,
the panorama evolved into many forms. The most popular was the moving
panorama -- several canvases stitched together into a scroll and
reeled across the stage. Depicting anything from travelogues to
battlefields, they were presented with dramatic lighting, music
and narration.
According to
Dawn Pheysey, exhibit curator, "The panorama provided a combination
of art and didactic entertainment for the masses which organized
historic events into a series of palatable visual images."
The difference between this exhibit and one hosted by
the museum in 1994-95 is the focus on the panorama as a form of
education and entertainment, she noted.
Crossing the Mississippi on the Ice
The current exhibit
presents scenes from two of the large moving panoramas. The Mormon
Panorama depicts church history, from Joseph Smith's First Vision
through the pioneers' entering the Salt Lake Valley.
Although the 22 individual
scenes were cut and framed in the 1970s, the museum is presenting
a "virtual" panorama for the live performances. While
scenes are projected from the back of a screen mounted on poles
Christensen used onstage, actors narrate the
script (condensed
from the original) and invite the audience to join in singing three
hymns -- "An Angel from on High," "Come, Come, Ye
Saints" and "We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet"
-- accompanied on a 19th-century square piano.
Nauvoo Temple on Fire
The other panorama
on display, depicting the history of the world from Adam and Eve
to Joseph Smith, was commissioned in 1887 by Dimick B. Huntington,
an Indian interpreter and missionary, who used the panorama to preach
the gospel to Indians in Utah. Christensen painted this, his first
panorama, in collaboration with fellow Utah artist Danquart Weggeland.
Only photographs survive
of another panorama painted by Christensen and other artists of
the Charles B. Hancock family's experiences in early church history.
Those photos are included in the exhibition.
The exhibit in the Marian
Adelaide Morris Cannon Gallery on the main floor of the museum is
free and open during regular museum hours, Mondays and Thursdays
10 a.m.-9 p.m., Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays 10 a.m.-6 p.m.,
and Saturdays noon-6 p.m. (closed Sundays). It will continue through
February 2004. Because of limited seating, reservations are required
for the live, 40-minute presentations Monday and Thursday evenings;
call 422-8287.
Two lectures are scheduled
in conjunction with the exhibit.
On Thursday,
March 13, at 7 p.m., Richard Jensen of the Smith Institute of History
at BYU will present "The Life of C.C.A. Christensen."
On Thursday, March 27, at 7 p.m., curator Dawn Pheysey will discuss
"The Role of the Panorama in America." Both lectures are
free and open to the public.
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© 2002Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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