Our mission is to bring into awareness the aesthetic and imaginative virtue of art forms that have faded in public esteem since the birth of cinema. Anchored by the history of immersive painted panoramas of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Velaslavasay Panorama is dedicated to contemporary interpretations of unusual visual experiences that evoke elusive sensations of nostalgia, stimulate the intellect, and demonstrate a relevant contrast to today’s increasingly digitized culture. For the past 20 years, the small team at the Velaslavasay Panorama has presented the only 360-degree painted panorama on the West Coast and held countless lectures and exhibits on related media worldwide serving an audience of 15,000 annually.

Beyond the painted panorama, the VP exists as a space for overlooked and underserved artists and individuals to redefine their experience of art by creating an environment that functions at once as a community center, entertainment hub, history museum and art exhibition space. Our programs utilize a hybridization of fields including historic research, sound art, painting, role-playing, handicraft and culinary arts, and it is this space of blurred boundaries and obscure cultural contexts that we are committed to exploring. We seek to democratize art as a collaborative and social experiment where traditional lines between high art vs. low art, academic vs. enthusiast, historic vs. contemporary, curator vs. artist are blurred and critiqued for the advancement of society as a whole.