Newsletter 16 December 2008 18th IPC Conference cancelled! 1 Board of IPC asks for funding contribu- Board of IPC asks for funding contribu- tion tion 1 The General Assembly of the International 17th Panorama Conference 1 Panorama Council (IPC), at its 17th Conference IPC International Executive Board meeting 2 on 14 September 2008 in Dresden/Germany, First victory on ‘Battle of Mount Isel’ 3 unanimously recommended that a letter be Panorama Council Panorama Mesdag applies World sent to all IPC registered institutions and Heritage 3 ’members’ urging institutions and individuals ‘Battle of Murten’ to be re-installed? 3 to donate to a Founding Fund to enable the www.panoramapainting.com Circular painting ’Klarwelt der transition of IPC into a well structured organi- Seligen’ to be restored 3 zation. ‘Battle of the Yser’ to be restored? 3 Because the IPC has no financial means of Maroldovo-Panorama in poor support for its group actions, all expenses are condition 4 being paid for by some members of its Board Diorama Charles Bridge Prague privately. This endangers the role and future re-visited 4 of IPC. The IPC, therefore, must formalize Part of the NY Gettysburg in auction 4 itself into a structure which collects dues from Panorama and dioramas in Turkey 4 members. The General Assembly of the IPC Heine Diaries Symposium 4 conference in Dresden decided to request a Atlanta Cyclorama’s new website 4 donation of (the equivalent of) € 1000.- from Highway ‘panoramas’ in Holland 5 each panorama institution, and a suggested Korean Paekho Artists in Brussels 5 donation of € 100.- from full individual IPC New studies and publications on members, and any other amounts deemed IPC Executive Board: panoramas etc. 5 possible from other individual, retired, or student members who have received this Prof. Yadegar Asisi letter. (GE-Berlin) 18th IPC Conference cancelled! To facilitate the IPC formalization, an account Dr. Mimi Colligan We are very sorry to have to inform you that has been established with Fortis Bank in The (AU-Melbourne) Patrick Deicher M.A. the 18th International Panorama Council Netherlands. Please specify your payment to (CH-Lucerne) Conference in Hawker, South Australia in ‘Founding Fund’ and mention the account Jeff Morgan March 2009 has been cancelled. Winston name and number, IBAN and BIC codes stated (AU-Hawker) Hewson, co-owner of Wilpena Panorama, has below. Of course you will get a receipt for Ernst Storm MSc passed away at the end of October. In your contribution, so also please specify your (NL-Rotterdam) Dr. Gebhard Streicher September he attended the 17th IPC name and address. Donating to this fund does (GE-Munich) Conference in Dresden together with his wife not necessarily entail any further obligations. Dipl. Arch. Damian Widmer Elaine. For IPC his death was a shock and we IPC Bank Account in the Netherlands: (CH-Lucerne) are with Winston's family and his business Fortis Bank Account: 24.89.62.426 Prof. Martin Woolner (UK-Plymouth) partners, the Jeff Morgan family. For Wilpena Registered name: 'Storm Reference IPC' Prof. Sanford Wurmfeld Panorama the situation has turned out to be IBAN: NL20 FTSB 0248 9624 26 (US-NYC) alarming, as it got into a serious financial BIC/Swift code: FTSBNL2R situation, worsened by the present-day credit We hope you will participate in the crisis. This has forced Jeff to cancel the establishment of a sound and decisive Honorary President: conference he was to host in Hawker, just organization in the common interest of all Prof. Ottó Trogmayer before he was to dispatch the invitations, and panoramas world wide. We also hope and (HU-Budapest) just before mailing this Newsletter. expect that you’ll be happy to continue your President: relation with IPC in the future. For now we are Ernst Storm, [email protected] The IPC Executive Board wishes strength to very grateful for your help to formally the Morgan and Hewson families and the establish the IPC. Wilpena Panorama staff. We seriously apologize to all IPC members who may have IPC Secretariat: been planning to visit Australia and attend the 17th International Panorama Conference conference. We also apologize to the speakers The 17th IPC Conference on 12–14 September Patrick Deicher who confirmed their appearance in the Hochruetistrasse 39 in Dresden, Germany, with the theme Spatial 6005 Lucerne panorama conference, introducing new points Simulation and the Future of the Panorama, Switzerland of view as part of the theme 'Panoramas: A was a well attended and highly appreciated World Perspective from Down Under', and to event. In twenty seminar papers the confer- Phone +41 79 637 31 53 the 'Fletcher's Mutiny' Cyclorama on Norfolk ence subject was introduced on a worldwide [email protected] Island, destination of the dreamed post scale. From reports on threatened panoramas conference tour. We expect someday there from the 19th century and topical restoration will be another occasion to visit both campaigns one changed to questions of man- panoramas. agement, to new technologies, to basic as- pects of optics and perception of the illusion The sudden cancellation of our 18th form panorama as well as to the challenges of Conference has caught us at an the future. Some sixty participants from five internationally very unfavourable moment continents assembled in the rooms of Yadegar and on very short notice. Yet we will explore Asisi’s panorama ‘1756 Dresden’ with its 3000 the possibility of improvising an alternative m² picture. conference later in 2009. Suggestions are being welcomed by IPC Secretary Patrick Deicher at [email protected]. -> p. 1 In the first seminar paper Renée Gautron informed about panorama. the danger of panorama Battle of Mount Isel by plans of At the end of the conference the members discussed and the Austrian ‘Land of Tyrol’ for the subdivision of the adopted a resolution about the threatened panorama ‘Bat- monument ensemble of painting and building and for the tle of Mount Isel’ in Innsbruck. The resolution of 60 translocation of the painting in a museum to be built. Un- experts present from all over the world stresses the fortunately, the Land of Tyrol had pulled back a first assent special value of the panorama in Innsbruck, because it to the organizers. shows one of the last four panoramas worldwide with the Ernst Storm informed about the destabilization of the widely original ensemble from painting, building, rotunda of Panorama Mesdag in The Hague by construction foreground and daylight guidance. The resolution directs work immediately next to the building, a listed monument. an appeal to the Austrian authorities to maintain the Although several court appeals didn’t result in a building Innsbruck panorama in its unity as a unique example of freeze, the contractor stopped working on the hardly the classical combination of rotunda construction and started project in the beginning of 2008. ‘Mesdag’ however panoramic painting. is in a state of emergency. Does that apply to the city, too? This December safeguarding measures will be carried out in the roof construction. Executive Board meeting, September 14, 2008 Ryszard Wójtowicz reported about the Based on the plenary discussion following the workshops preservation/restoration as well as the new presentation of on the future of the IPC the Executive Board has taken the the Gettysburg Cyclorama. He has already been involved to following decisions. the campaigns in Wroclaw in Poland and Szeged in On structure and finance: Hungary. Principal challenges in Gettysburg were the - to endorse the secretary’s proposal to have prepared all doubling of the canvas as well as the addition of the upper decisions concerning the formal structuring, membership, third of the painting lost decades before. Moreover, with financing and founding committees to be taken at the 18th the construction of a new museum building it was possible IPC in Hawker in March 2009; to restore correct illusionistic presentation manner of - to trust upon a core group of five (Mimi Colligan, Patrick panoramas with a visitors’ platform on the horizon line and Deicher, Ernst Storm, Damian Widmer, Sandy Wurmfeld) an illusionistic three-dimensional foreground. to develop these proposals into a draft for the articles of In a complementary seminar paper Thomas Schoeller and association, establishing the association in an European Norbert Bergmann explained the campaign on panorama country, the text not being in conflict with a possible Altoetting lasting from 2004 to 2007. They informed about affiliation with ICOM in the future and not changing the the restoration of the painting, the foreground and the name and logo of the IPC, just adding ‘in the world’ to the building with a conservator’s and engineer’s view. 1992 ‘Panorama Interest Group’ aims declaration; At the end of the first day a real highlight was the historical - to deliver the text of the crucial articles to the other review by Erkki Huhtamo ranging from Daguerre’s board members before the end of January 2009, counting dioramas to modern attempts of the use of panoramic on everyone’s comment within two weeks; views. Karol Kwiatek presented the possibilities of the - to send the final proposal to all members before the end computer-based 3D-modelling of architectural cultural of February 2009, as part of an agenda for the plenary monuments on the base of spherical panoramas. So Yong meeting during the 18th IPC Conference; Jin presented an overview about the panoramas and large- - to endorse the General Meeting’s opinion, that two scale dioramas which had been painted since 1972 by schemes of differentiated membership’s fees will be North Korean artists in the Democratic People’s Republic of introduced, one for panoramas (based on a fee of 0.1 to Korea and also in Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Malaysia.