This week, I’ll answer some questions from visitors to the blog and exhibition. As always, if there’s anything you’d like to me to address, just ask about it in the comments.

Q: How did the Museum acquire The Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley?

A: After Dickeson died in 1882, his brother sold the panorama and Dickeson’s collection of artifacts to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. In 1949, the panorama came to the Saint Louis Art Museum as a loan for an exhibition about the Mississippi River. After the exhibition concluded, the Museum decided to purchase the panorama from the University of Pennsylvania as a rare example of this type of 19th-century visual entertainment.
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