For those in the Cincinnati area, the National Geographic sponsored exhibition "Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah From Slave Ship to Pirate Ship” features eleven murals by Gregory Manchess. The exhibit is held at the Cincinnati Museum Center through January 2, 2008, and then travels to Philadelphia, Phoenix, and fifteen other cities. An interesting Wall Street Journal article states, “the large and dramatic murals painted by Greg Manchess illustrating incidents from Bellamy's cruise, including the pirates swarming aboard a French merchantman off Cuba, provide just the right sort of Boys-Own-Adventure atmosphere à la Howard Pyle or N.C. Wyeth.”From Greg:
"There's no fantasy here, this is the real stuff. We had to stay
as accurate to history as possible. Through eyewitness accounts
and trial transcripts we were able to capture many details of pirate
life: clothing, hair, weapons, lifestyle. Even the pirate flag in one
of the murals is from a description at trial.
Opening in Cincinnati was special for me since I'm from the area. The Museum Center is the old Union Terminal train station, a classic example of Art Deco architecture. It houses fine, large WPA tile murals by Winold Reiss. I thought how wonderful it would be to have murals in that building, and now, I virtually do."
Currently Greg is working on another set of paintings for National Geographic (the magazine this time) about the reign of the Nubian pharaoh Taharqa over Egypt.