who is a cartographer to tell me where the mountains are?
just in case you need to do this some day, here is how you digitize a panoramic painting! i'll be spending most of my time this week in the Ann Mary Brown Memorial handling this massive watercolor painting with my coworker Mae & Peter Harrington, curator of the Military Collection at the John Hay Library. 
A crew of photographers from Boston have been hired to digitize the
entire 4.5 high by 273 feet long, double sided, panorama about the life of Giuseppe Garibaldi which was completed in
1859 by J.J. Story with figures by Henry Selsun. in the mid-nineteenth century people would pay to watch a moving panoramic painting, the scenes would be scrolled by & a narrator would read an explanation. when this project is completed i believe you will be able to watch it online & even listen to a new recording of the speech.
besides being about 150 years old, this painting travelled around a great deal so it has had many assorted repairs done to it & was once conserved by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. it has everything: delicate japanese paper repairs, heavier paper repairs (above left) that were painted to match the original watercolors, filmoplast tape & a great deal of hand-stitching along the fore edge (above right) because the painting itself is on paper & the edge is lined with canvas.
end of history lesson for today, kids. thank you thank you, everyone who came out for ArtBeast in Somerville this past saturday, i had a lot of fun & sales were great! the shop Magpie in Davis has been restocked with vinyl goodies & i'm done with craft fairs until October, but now i suppose it's time to start sewing quilts for the holiday season...
