Communitas Lecture to Feature Vance Byrd's Exploration of Panoramas, Transatlantic Commemoration

LOGAN, Utah — The Department of Art + Design will host Vance Byrd in an upcoming Communitas Lecture at 5 p.m. March 6 in the Russell/Wanlass Performance Hall. The Communitas Lecture Series, which is in its eighth year, features important visiting artists, scholars and designers from across the country and the world.

Vance Byrd is a scholar of late-18th and 19th-century German literature as well as art history, whose work investigates how literary and print culture intersect with the history of visual media. He will be speaking about his current book project, “Listening to Panoramas,” which looks beyond statues to discover how panoramic forms played a pivotal role in transatlantic visual and sonic cultures of commemoration.

Panoramas let audiences around the world immerse themselves in stories about natural and urban landscapes as well as bloody battle scenes depicted on larger-than-life circular paintings.

“Issues to do with visual culture and representation are always timely and significant,” said Professor and Art History Area Coordinator David Wall. “Human culture has always understood itself through images and Vance’s work brings to light the processes by which this was taking place transnationally in the late 19th century.”

Byrd’s book proposes that the emotions produced by the sonic and visual effects at panorama shows determine how the past is remembered and politicized. It also investigates how Black artists have turned to the panoramic form to resist narratives about defeat and victory in the American Civil War and to reinscribe the history of the Black freedom struggles onto the medium.

“Understanding visual culture is a way of understanding ourselves,” Wall said. “In view of that, Professor Byrd’s presentation will demonstrate the overriding importance of critical engagement with the visual culture and cultures that surround us.”

This lecture series is free and open to the public. For more information, visit the online calendar.