In eighth grade, Vance Byrd was surrounded by the Battle of Atlanta.
A school field trip took him to the Atlanta Cyclorama and Civil War Museum, built around a massive cylindrical painting of the Civil War battle. Created in 1882 by 17 German artists, the painting is 40 feet tall and longer than a football field, and completely surrounds viewers with the painted battle scene. There’s an audio component, too: the recorded voices of Civil War veterans and an official narrative.
“It was supposed to make you feel like you were there,” said Byrd, now the Frank and Roberta Furbush Scholar and Chair of the German Studies Department at Grinnell College.