Gigantic painting causes large headache

Ever since George Jones and his museum acquired one of the world’s largest paintings, they have been puzzling over a basic logistical problem.

The Battle of Atlanta, created by a score of German artists in 1886, is as high as a four-storey building and longer than a football pitch. The Atlanta History Center, where Dr Jones is curator, constructed a new building for the painting, but how were they going to remove it from its old, leaky home, where it had been on display since 1921?

The basic answer was: through the roof. This week two large cranes drew into position on either side of the Atlanta Cyclorama and Civil War Museum in the city. The museum closed in 2015, and since then the enormous painting inside it has been cut in two and rolled up on two hefty upright spindles.

These were to be raised through the roof of the old museum, rotated slowly into a horizontal position, and laid on the flat-bed trailers of two trucks that were parked in the road outside.

‘‘This is the coolest and the scariest thing I have ever done in my professional career,’’ Dr Jones told the local television station Atlanta 2. The Battle of Atlanta is a cyclorama, one of the vast paintings that were the nineteenth-century equivalents of an IMAX cinema. The scene in this case was a crucial civil war battle in July 1864 when Union armies were mustered outside Atlanta. The Confederate General John Hood staged a withdrawal, trying to lure General James McPherson while sending a corps to attack the Union forces from the left and the rear. These manoeuvres were mistimed and, though the rebels broke through and McPherson was killed, the Confederates were repulsed with heavy losses. Two decades later, Senator John Logan, who had taken part in the conquest of Atlanta, commissioned the painting for northern audiences. It would show a counterattack and an ambulance carrying away McPherson’s body. The American Panorama Company in Milwaukee hired 20 German artists who visited Atlanta. They interviewed veterans and studied the battle field. The finished work went on display in the north, Senator Logan died, the company showing it went bust, and it was brought to Atlanta .

It became a shrine, of sorts, to the Confederacy. However, by the 1970s, the area surrounding the exhibit had become an African American neighbourhood, the civil rights era had dawned, and suggestions by the mayor that it be restored caused an outcry. In 2014 the mayor of Atlanta, announced that the city would transfer the painting to the Atlanta History Center. Once it has been installed in its new home, at an estimated cost of $35 million, it will go on display to the public again next year. Two things happened after Bill English named the election date that should worry his opponents.

National used its advantage to hit the ground running – promising more cops, whacking petrol companies about the head with an inquiry into pricing, and wiping historic homosexuality convictions.

Meanwhile, Labour squandered its good start to the year.

Leader Andrew Little read his MPs the riot act over caucus discipline, after MPs and the party were at odds over Little’s promise of a seat for broadcaster Willie Jackson.

One of Little’s MPs even hired a PR firm to publicly call him out on it. MPs have been expelled for less.

Only one of these parties looks like it’s ready for an election.

National has shown it will be ruthless about neutralising contentious issues between now and September 23.

Business as usual, in other words.

Labour, despite claiming it’s ready to fight an election any time, is doing a good job of looking as if it’s still got other stuff on its mind, like settling internal power struggles.

But don’t pack away the political bunting just yet.

The election is still eight months away and it’s going to be a long hard slog for all of us.

So what could happen between now and September 23?

Extremism exhaustion

Kiwis have an insatiable appetite for Donald Trump. The world stops, even when Trump mouthpiece Sean Spicer speaks.

For the political junkies among us, it’s overwhelming – and strangely gratifying – to be surrounded by so many new sufferers of our disorder.

But this is a new, extremetourism style of politics; loud, dangerous and frenetic. And it’s sucking up the political oxygen here.

The same day that English announced nearly 1000 new cops, the story broke about Trump’s ‘‘worst call by far’’ abuse of Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. No contest.

The Opposition is finding it even harder to get traction.

But what happens when exhaustion sets in and Trump’s power to shock is diminished?

Will a politics-weary public switch off?

That could be fatal for Labour and the Greens. When the phone is off the hook it’s hard for opposition parties to get cut through.

The sense of a world in constant turmoil could compound the problem.

A risk-averse election and flight to safety would favour National.

But there is another scenario. One in which we get swept along by the same forces of extreme antiestablishment-ism, a deep cynicism with the political system and a rejection of the status quo.

The things that were broken that drove change in Britain and the United States are not so broken here.

There is still a high level of trust in the integrity of our institutions, immigration has not