Myth-busting: Reopened, restored and rebranded Atlanta Cyclorama challenges how we shape our own notions of history

The Atlanta Cyclorama during its restoration (Atlanta History Center)

Clark Gable is immortalized in the diorama (Civil War Picket)

The boss anxiously paces as he exhorts his fellow German artists to create something spectacular, to make their subjects real.

"These men are in battle, they're not in church. You must make them look ALIVE! .... Franz! I need more smoke. Bigger explosions! This scene must be accurate in every detail."

The conversation, imagined in a 12-minute film as occurring in a Milwaukee studio in 1886, is part of the complex story of the 360-degree Atlanta Cyclorama painting, which reopened to the public Friday after a relocation and exhaustive restoration. 

Seventeen men who created the colossal cyclorama would be pleased the massive painting is still around and presented the way they intended. Only three such works remain in North America.

The artists likely could not have anticipated how the painting would be misinterpreted and its message spun over the years. They were hired to memorialize a huge Union victory at the Battle of Atlanta during the Civil War. But within a few years, the painting had moved south and promoters instead extolled Confederate valor and pride.

The reopening at the Atlanta History Center comes at a time when Confederate monuments are being removed across the country and people are navigating difficult discussions on race, beliefs and how to view the past.

While visitors will see the same painting and diorama figures that combined to produce an exhilarating immersion into the July 22, 1864, battle, they’re being asked to think about how art creates myths and men can sometimes twist facts. The center hopes visitors check their preconceived notions about the war at the door.

“You can’t address difficult topics by ignoring them,” says Gordon Jones, the history center’s senior military historian. “People are afraid of this painting.”

(Courtesy of Atlanta History Center)

They weren't thinking about the 'Lost Cause'

The Atlanta Cyclorama has escaped simple explanation ever since the last daub of paint was placed on Belgian linen more than 130 years ago. It’s had different meanings, depending on the audience and the overall message projected at the venues.

The Gettysburg Cyclorama, which had been completed just a few years before, concentrated on soldiers who served in the East and fought in that momentous battle. 

The Battle of Atlanta painting honored the legions of Midwestern boys who fought and died in Tennessee, Georgia, the Carolina and other states while taking Atlanta, marching to the sea and crushing Southern resistance. 

The cyclorama toured a few Midwestern cities before landing in Atlanta.

Instead of focusing on the Union soldiers as an army of liberation for enslaved persons, the promoters projected stories of valiant Confederate troops engaged in a heroic struggle against a more powerful enemy – “the only Confederate victory ever painted.”

They removed a captured Confederate flag and repainted a knot of prisoners being led away, making them Union soldiers instead of Rebels (that has since been rectified).

Such changes would have surprised the artists, says Sheffield Hale, president and CEO of the Atlanta History Center. “It was all about making money. They weren’t thinking about the ‘Lost Cause.’”

The “Lost Cause” was conjured in the South after the war to romanticize the Southern cause and erase slavery as the primary cause of the Civil War, replacing it with states’ rights, the center contends. “Over more than century, The Battle of Atlanta has been retouched, rebranded and reinterpreted,” the center says.

Scene from film projected over the painting (Picket photo)

The film and exhibits outside the rotunda explore other myths associated with the Civil War, which ended slavery but failed to safeguard rights for freed African-Americans ensnared by Jim Crow laws and other forms of oppression. Exhibits take on claims that Abraham Lincoln alone freed enslaved persons, that the nation was healed and the Northern victory was a panacea.

The film doesn't spend much time on details of the battle itself. Below the viewing platform are interactive screens where you can zoom in on scenes from the painting and learn more about depicted historical figures and what happened in the battle, one of four major clashes in Atlanta.

The theatrical presentation projected over 120 feet of the painting features historic and modern characters discussing what the painting shows (gunfire, explosions and hand-to-hand combat) and doesn’t (the role of women and African-Americans during the war and battle).

One scene in the presentation aptly summarizes the lingering debate over the war’s cause and legacy.

A wheelchair-bound Rebel veteran describes the scene showing the brief Rebel breakthrough along the railroad between Atlanta and Decatur. It’s the focal point of the painting. “I keep thinking that our cause was just,” he says. “Weren’t we fighting for our homes and families?”

An interactive kiosk in gallery near painting (Picket photo)

An African-American character projected on the painting counters with his recollections of carrying grievously wounded Yankees off the battlefield. While more than 200,000 African-Americans fought for the union, none were permitted to take up arms during the campaign for Atlanta. Instead, they served as stretcher bearers, cooks and wagon drivers.

“I can’t believe that anyone would deny that the Rebel slave holders were fighting for any cause other than to keep me and my brothers and sisters in bondage,” the black man says. “They were fighting for a cause. We were fighting for our lives. For freedom.”

And he rebuffs the victory assertion made by the aged Confederate.

“Funny, now I seem to recall the Rebels actually lost this battle, along with the war.”

TLC for an American artifact

Within a few years of the end of a conflict that claimed more than 700,000 lives, artists and craftsmen created monuments and paintings to remember the fallen and honor their cause.

Before nickelodeons and other attractions held sway in the early 20th century, cycloramas traversing the Unites States were the entertainment of the day. Viewers on platforms gazed at the circular paintings in wonder, soaking in dramatic scenes.

A view from the new platform (Civil War Picket)

Working from sketches in their Milwaukee studio in 1886, the 17 artists spent five months on the effort. The result was both BIG and impressive: 49 feet tall and 371 feet in circumference.

Some 6,000 figures were captured rushing to or caught up in ferocious fighting around a brick house as an onslaught of Federal reinforcements pushed Confederate troops back

Jones says the artists wanted to show a pivotal moment during the fighting. “There is no point in painting a 49-0 walkover.”

The cyclorama entertained crowds for decades until 2015, after officials announced it was moving to a new home.

The painting often got rough treatment. Sometimes, it was cut to fit into buildings, such as at its longtime Atlanta home, Grant Park. Deterioration and water leaks took some punch out of the dramatic work. Attendance gradually dropped as the public turned to other forms of entertainment.

“It’s amazing that it survived,” Jones says of the 10,000-pound painting.

The work has been cleaned at its new home, some areas repainted and colors that faded over time are now vibrant. Three missing sections were recreated and the mural went from 42 to 49 feet tall and 359 to 371 feet in circumference – adding areas that were lost over time as the Cyclorama traveled from venue to venue.

Gone is the revolving platform that was used at Grant Park; now visitors can turn around to see the entire painting.

Railroads have always been important to Atlanta (Picket photo)

Patrons will enter the large room via a tunnel that is built under the diorama. They will have a moment to view the back of the painting to see how it is rigged and weighted to ensure its hyperbolic shape.

A cyclorama is a panorama image intended to place the viewer in the middle of a scene. Often, dioramas are built in the foreground to provide additional realism. Cycloramas were an early form of virtual reality and considered by Jones to be the IMAX theaters of the day.

Atlanta’s cyclorama received its current diorama during the mid-1930s. Some 128 plaster figures of soldiers, faux artillery and other pieces and natural elements were placed before the painting, heightening the drama.

While real Georgia soil has been replaced at the history center by “artificial” dirt, the likeness of actor Clark Gable is still in the scene. His face was added to a diorama figure after he visited Atlanta in 1939 for the premiere of “Gone with the Wind.”

A change in messaging

A large building at Grant Park featured the cyclorama for more than eight decades. Time and a lack of money to maintain it took a toll. While it saw a limited restoration during the 1930s, it wasn’t until the term of Mayor Maynard Jackson that the painting got a new infusion of attention.

An emotional detail from the 1886 painting (Atlanta History Center)

“It was a battle that helped free my ancestors,” the African-American politician said. “And I’ll make sure the depiction is saved.”

After a makeover, the painting reopened to large crowds in 1982. But attendance began sliding and the city eventually looked for other locations. The Atlanta History Center agreed to become its custodian and the massive work was rolled up in early 2017 and trucked to the center in a delicate operation.

Artists worked on the painting for a year and a half, changing a few repainted figures to their original form. And they spruced up an eagle, Old Abe, soaring over the battlefield. Speaking of myths, Abe and the 8^th Wisconsin regiment weren’t at the battle – the artists squeezed in this tribute at somebody’s request.

The new film at the Atlanta Cyclorama is a far cry from what patrons heard when they visited Grant Park.

A 1968 narration by Victor Jory said the painting was “not a memorial to the South but a united nation.” It concentrates on the battle itself and not the war’s legacy and its impact on women, African-Americans and other civilians. It and previous recordings spotlight the bravery of Confederate soldiers, how they fought hard but could not overcome overwhelming Federal numbers.

Gordon Jones describes an artifact in new exhibit area (Picket)

The great-great-grandfather of Hale, the history center’s CEO, fought with the 36^th Alabama at the Battle of Atlanta.

Hale says the history center’s message is not of proselytizing, but provoking deeper thinking. But he wants to make one thing clear.

“If you view this as a Confederate monument … you will be surprised,” Hale said. “Because it is not one.”