We were contacted by Donna Curtain, executive director at the Pilgrim Hall Museum, in Plymouth, MA. regarding a project for the upcoming 400^th anniversary of the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth.  One hundred years ago, there was a “Tercentenary” celebration, this celebration included a presidential visit, a grand pageant with a cast of over 1000 local residents, and the recreation of its historic waterfront as an auto-friendly park of monuments and memorials. This year’s exhibition features hundreds of tercentenary images, objects, posters, drawings, maps, plans, and memorials.

The centerpiece of the exhibit is a 20 ½ foot gallery wrap that is a panoramic view of the pageant cast. The original photograph is 8 ½” by 54” to make the large print we used our Cruse scanner to create a digital image of the original. The original was scanned while still framed and under glass so as not to disturb the nearly 100-year-old photographic print. The scan was cleaned up and canvas area added for the wrap.

The gallery wrap bars were custom made for this project by Jack Richeson & Co. At Richeson they assemble the frame to make sure everything fits correctly, all the needed holes are pre-drilled, and the pieces are marked with numbers and letters before being disassembled and shipped. The frame arrived in three large boxes with all of the hardware needed for assembly.




Because this is such a unique project, we decided to make a time-lapse video. We used a GoPro Hero 4 Session on a light stand.  The camera was set to capture a frame every 5 seconds, and the final images were cropped to 1920x1080 and assembled into videos using Adobe Photoshop. A few photographers and artists stop by to see parts of the process.

 

Exhibit - Tercentenary: How Plymouth Celebrated its 300th Anniversary in 1920-21
October 8th - December 30th, 2016
Sponsored by Eastern Bank

In 1920-21, the celebration of the 300th Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims in Plymouth drew enormous crowds and garnered national attention. PHM’s new fall exhibition tells the real story of how Plymouth pulled together a Presidential visit, a grand pageant with a cast of over 1000 local residents, and the recreation of its historic waterfront as an auto-friendly park of monuments and memorials. Featuring a 21-foot panoramic view of the pageant cast, hundreds of Tercentenary images, objects, posters, drawings, maps, plans, and memorials, Tercentenary reveals how, almost a century ago, Americans commemorated the Pilgrims and unabashedly celebrated America’s early founding in Plymouth.