Velaslavasay Panorama
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Velaslavasay_Panorama_Marquee.jpg/220px-Velaslavasay_Panorama_Marquee.jpg)
The Velaslavasay Panorama is an artistic, film, and performance venue in Los Angeles, California, featuring the only painted, 360-degree Arctic panorama created in the United States since the nineteenth century.[1] The panorama was originally established by Sara Velas in 2000 at the Tswuun-Tswuun Rotunda building at 5553 Hollywood Boulevard in a cylindrical structure which had formerly housed the Chu Chu Chinese Restaurant. In 2004, its original venue threatened with demolition, the panorama moved to its present location at 1122 W. 24th Street, the former Union Theatre in the University Park neighborhood of South Los Angeles.[2]
To date, the panorama has hosted two full-circle panoramic paintings. The first, Panorama of the Valley of the Smokes, depicted the Los Angeles area as it would have appeared in 1792, the year that Robert Barker's very first panorama was unveiled; it was displayed at the Tswuun-Tswuun rotunda from 2001 to 2004. The second, Effulgence of the North, depicting scenes of the Arctic from the era of its nineteenth-century exploration, debuted at the new Union Theatre location in July of 2007, and remains on display. The venue has also hosted moving panoramas, among them the Grand Moving Mirror of California, which debuted in 2010, and remains on static display in their theatre area.[3]
In 2014, the panorama added a new attraction, the Nova Tuskhut, replicating the interior of a trading post in the Arctic regions, and featuring a miniature dioramic view through its window. Its debut was accompanied by a new exhibit of materials relating to the appearance of Inuit people in Hollywood films from the silent era to the 1940's, and featuring images and memorabilia relating to early Inuit film star Nancy Columbia. The event was also marked by a joint lecture, "Before Nanook," by two prominent Arctic historians, Kenn Harper and Russell Potter, as well as a series of movies with polar themes, entitled Mush: To The Movies.[4]
References
- ^ Potter, Russell, Arctic Spectacles: The Frozen North in Visual Culture, 1818–1875 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007) (ISBN 0295986808), p. 210
- ^ "How to make the city shine / What would finally civilize L.A.?; Feed – and fund – the 'ferals'", Los Angeles Times, Dec. 26, 2007 p. A31
- ^ Huhtamo, Erkki, Illusions in Motion: Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013) (ISBN 9780262018517) , p. 14
- ^ "Mush! to the Movies: a Polar Film Club – Nanook of the North and The Idea of North". Los Angeles FilmForum. 20 March 2015. Retrieved 29 December 2016.
External links
- Velaslavasay Panorama: Panorama exhibition hall in old silent theater with a beautiful backyard garden, Atlas Obscura
- Exploring The Century-Old University Park Theater That's Revived The Pre-Film Art Of Panoramas, Los Angeles Curbed, January 14, 2014.
- [1], Velaslavasay Panorama Homepage