We were in the middle of day two of our vacation and we hadn’t done anything fun yet. I suggested two places we could stop on our way through Atlanta — the museum where The General, one of the trains in the Great Locomotive Chase, is housed, or the Atlanta Cyclorama. My wife thought the cyclorama sounded more interesting. I did a bit of research and discovered that the painting had been moved from its dedicated building downtown where I’d seen it in 1990, to the Atlanta History Center, north of town.
The Cyclorama is housed in its own circular wing of the museum. There’s a raised platform in the center with signboards telling the history of the painting itself. It’s pretty weak on the history of the battle, but great at hitting all the in-vogue agendas — the plight of “enslaved persons” (apparently “slaves” is now politically incorrect), women, and native Americans. There’s one black person in the painting, a guy on a horse in a small copse, but there were entire signs and part of the video explaining what his history might have been. The last time I saw the painting the guide told us the only woman in the painting was visible as a small red figure on the porch of a cabin, but there is nothing about her now. Instead, they’ve chosen a random soldier and claim that he is really a woman, representing the handful of women who disguised themselves as men and joined the Army. They showed a video right on the painting that highlighted all the stuff about Blacks and women that we’d already read on the signs.
Anyway, the painting was still cool. Here’s the back, which we saw as we entered the wing.
Scenes from the painting.
In this next one, Atlanta is visible on the horizon down the road.
A little bit of the viewing platform. The painting was originally intended for northern audiences. For a while it was on display in the south. In the upper left corner of this section, you can see a group of men heading away from the battle. These are Confederate prisoners of war. When it was displayed in the south, these were painted over to look like Union soldiers fleeing the battle. It was somewhere in this section that a docent pointed out the “woman” soldier, but I didn’t pay a lot of attention because that’s just silly.
It’s hard to see in my photo, but there’s a cabin to the left of the road in the distance in this painting. That’s where we were told the lone woman was. I’ve blown up that portion of the painting to give a better look, but I have no idea if she’s there or not. I remember being told that she was dressed in red. I could be mistaken. The only red I see looks like a puddle of blood.
From the beginning, terrain features, like dirt, bushes, rocks, were added in front of the painting for realism. In the 1930’s, figures of various heights were included. here are a few of them.
Supposedly Clark Gable saw the painting and said the only thing wrong with it was that he wasn’t in it. So they made fun of him by including him as a dead Union soldier.
This is a model of the building in Milwaukee where the painting was created.
It was a surprise to me that the Texas, the other locomotive involved in the Great Locomotive Chase, was on display outside the Cyclorama, so we got to see that too.
We split a sandwich and a salad in the museum cafe, and they were surprisingly tasty.
We wandered around the rest of the museum, but we soon realized they were just playing the same politically correct tune over and over and over. They couldn’t get away from any glorification of the Confederacy quickly enough and I found myself in the weird position of disagreeing with both side of the issue. The Civil War was fought to defend slavery, and that was wrong. But the currently popular condemnation of all White culture is also wrong. After all, it was White people who formed the Republican party to defeat slavery and who fought the war to end it. We didn’t stay long.
