By Gillian Graham
Staff Writer

Nearly 160 years after audiences crowded into theaters to watch John Bunyan’s epic “Pilgrim’s Progress,” the moving panorama is headed for a facelift.
The Saco Museum last week secured a $52,000 Save America’s Treasures grant to restore the 800-foot-long and 8-foot-tall panorama that depicts 60 scenes. The grant will also pay for the creation of a replica to display the panorama in motion and an interactive video for the museum’s Web site.
The piece is one of 10 moving panoramas worldwide known to exist today.
Museum Director Jessica Skwire Routhier said the panorama, also called “Bunyan’s Tableau,” was created in 1851 with distemper paint on muslin, a coarse fabric. It was presented to audiences nationwide, its scenes scrolling from one roll to another across a stage. She said the productions also featured dramatic lights, music and narration.
Skwire Routhier said the panorama traveled for about 30 years before its final show in Biddeford. Someone then bought the panorama and stored it in a Biddeford barn. By then, “the panorama was seen as something quaint and old fashioned,” she said.
In 1896, the panorama was given to the York Institute (now the Saco Museum), where it was displayed the following year. After it was rolled back up, the panorama was tucked into a dusty corner of the basement, where it was “lost” to curators for 100 years, Skwire Routhier said.
Despite its age, the panorama is mostly intact, Skwire Routhier said.
“That said, it definitely needs some help,” she said.
Restoration will begin in January, when the panorama is shipped to the Williamstown Art Conservation Center in Massachusetts. The work will include fixing and replacing paint and stabilizing the fabric, which is creased and ripped. Restoration will take about a year.
Because the panorama is too delicate to display in motion, a full-size functional replica will be created during the restoration process, Skwire Routhier said. A video using photos, narration and music will be posted on the Web site to allow people from all over the world to see the panorama, she said.
“I’m certainly hopeful this project will give the panorama more visibility,” she said.
    The project also will allow more people to see Pilgrim’s Progress, a religious allegory about making the way through the pitfalls of life to salvation, Skwire Routhier said. The “action packed” story was popular at the time the panorama was created.
“I think people in the 19th century adopted the religious message, but it was also exciting to go see,” she said. “It was a real entertainment thing.”
Collections manager Marie O’Brien said the opportunity to show people the panorama is exciting and special because so few survived.
“It’s phenomenal because so few are preserved. To have it still in existence is just an amazing thing,” she said.
Executive Director Leslie Rounds said the museum staff is “absolutely delighted” about receiving the grant. The award is a matching grant, so the museum will work to secure an additional $52,000 to support the project. She said she is excited for people to see the panorama when the project is completed.
“Our dream is to actually engage and theater and exhibit it the way it was meant to be exhibited,” she said.
Rounds said seeing the restored piece will be an “eye-opening” experience because no one has seen it for more than 100 years.  
“It’s an amazing artifact,” she said. “We knew it was a national treasure.”

Staff Writer Gillian Graham can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 213.