Gettysburg Cyclorama is to reopen on Sept. 26
The pair of soldier’s shoes is battered and hard-worn; a hole in one leather sole suggests the many miles trudged en route to battle with a rifled musket and canteen.
These Civil War-style shoes are being pressed into duty for a battle that ended 145 years ago — not for last weekend’s re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg but for a conflict that still rages on the canvas of an enormous painting in the round. The Gettysburg Cyclorama, as it’s called, is to reopen on Sept. 26 after a five-year restoration, and for the first time in more than a century, viewers standing in the middle of the wraparound canvas will see it as its artist originally intended.
Like props on a stage set, the lace-up shoes will join scores of other items — bayonets, saddles, cartridge boxes, canvas stretchers, knapsacks, even a full-size Union cannon with its carriage — in a diorama that will be placed in the foreground of the cyclorama’s canvas. By contributing to the illusion of three dimensions, the props are meant to give viewers a sense of immersion in the chaotic carnage.
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These Civil War-style shoes are being pressed into duty for a battle that ended 145 years ago — not for last weekend’s re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg but for a conflict that still rages on the canvas of an enormous painting in the round. The Gettysburg Cyclorama, as it’s called, is to reopen on Sept. 26 after a five-year restoration, and for the first time in more than a century, viewers standing in the middle of the wraparound canvas will see it as its artist originally intended.
Like props on a stage set, the lace-up shoes will join scores of other items — bayonets, saddles, cartridge boxes, canvas stretchers, knapsacks, even a full-size Union cannon with its carriage — in a diorama that will be placed in the foreground of the cyclorama’s canvas. By contributing to the illusion of three dimensions, the props are meant to give viewers a sense of immersion in the chaotic carnage.