M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

"Mormon Panorama" at BYU's Museum of Art

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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