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Scottish Rite murals leaving Fort Scott
An artistic piece of Scottish Rite history in Fort Scott will soon have a new home.
A Minnesota-based company has purchased 80 scenic backdrops that have been housed in the former Scottish Rite Temple building located at 110 S. Main St., for decades. Workers representing Bella Tex, a Jackson, Tenn.-based stage curtain company, are in town this week to remove and clean the backdrops before they are transported to Minnesota for display in a museum center that is being constructed, according to Wendy Waszut-Barrett, curatorial director for the Minnesota Masonic Heritage Center, which purchased the drops.
Waszut-Barrett, of Minneapolis, Minn., said she is also the owner and founder of Bella Scena, LLC, a scenery restoration company. She was on hand with a group of workers representing Bella Tex on Wednesday at the temple building, where the drops are housed in the auditorium upstairs.
Waszut-Barrett said the backdrops are being cleaned and will eventually be restored and placed in storage until they are displayed in a museum. The drops are rolled and placed in containers for protection during transport. She said she has participated in more than 500 similar backdrop restorations in cities across the U.S, including Concordia and Cuba in Kansas.
"They're bringing down the curtains and folding them," she said. "I am on site to provide guidance and historical concentration."
Waszut-Barrett said she restores historic scenery and also serves as a consultant.
"I work with the Scottish Rite in the southern and northern jurisdictions regarding scenery," she said.
The collection of drops, painted by noted artist Thomas G. Moses in the early 1900s, had to be saved, Waszut-Barrett said.
"I knew the historic provenance of this collection," she said. "It's the best collection nationwide based on the artistic provenance and the artist who created them."
Moses, born in 1856, started painting for theaters in 1873 and painted most of the backdrops used at the Fort Scott temple on site. Moses died in 1932, Waszut-Barrett said.
"There are a handful of collections to be saved at all costs and this is one of them," she said. "These are some of the earliest Masonic designs for the southern jurisdiction."
Moses painted the backdrops more than 100 years ago at the age of 50. He returned about 20 years later to repaint the 30-foot-by-30-foot backdrops, which were also widened an additional 10 feet. Moses traveled the U.S. painting scenery for theaters and Masonic Temples. He also became an accomplished landscape painter.
Waszut-Barrett also said for many painters, creating artwork on theater backdrops was their way to make a living. The medium provided a training ground for several artists. She said the style the Fort Scott drops are painted in "cannot be replicated."
"These backdrops were specifically designed for this building and the city," she said.
She said the drops will go into climate-controlled storage and then "come out scene by scene" for restoration. Waszut-Barrett said she will personally restore each piece and a "historic center is being constructed for them." She said it takes about one week to restore each piece.
An eventual 50,000-square-foot facility that will include a museum, library, lodge room, banquet facility and 500-seat historic theater is being constructed in Bloomington, Minn., with a planned opening in June 2016. The center is being built to accommodate the 80 historic backdrops from Fort Scott, Waszut-Barrett said.
"They will be open to the public as part of a free museum," she said.
Waszut-Barrett said the Minnesota Masonic Heritage Center purchased the collection of drops from the Valley of Fort Scott Scottish Rite Masons for $25,000. She said the estimated value on the collection is between $1 million and $2 million. The cost to restore the collection is about $250,000 to $400,000.
Waszut-Barrett said it will take about two to three weeks to load and move the drops. The backdrops feature a variety of scenic backgrounds including an Egyptian interior, palaces and palatial scenes for kings, a quarry scene, a mausoleum scene, landscapes and seascapes, ancient ruins, and several others.
John Bartelsmeyer, representative for the Valley of Fort Scott, said he is "sad" to see the backdrops leave Fort Scott. He joined the organization in 1973, working on the stage. He said he was influenced by his father, who also worked on the stage, and many other past Scottish Rite members.
"There is no one more sad than me. I was the stage director for 40 years. I worked there in the Scottish Rite," he said. "Our point of view is we might have been able to sell them off and made more money, but there's no guarantee. It's more beneficial in the long run to keep them together, these paintings by Thomas Moses. And it's maybe less than they're worth, but it's the best offer we got. We didn't want to sell them, but we can't afford to keep them in the building."