Photo exhibit addresses legacy of Civil War on modern culture

A Union soldier fills his plate at General Pickett’s Buffet in Gettysburg, while behind him a mural depicts the razing of the Confederacy.

A Confederate soldier clutches his bayonet and keeps a sharp lookout — with a Staples office supply store plainly visible behind him. Two Union soldiers camp in front of a Domino’s Pizza at the site where the Battle of Fredericksburg took place in 1862.

California photographer Gregg Segal’s “State of the Union” photos are both funny and disquieting, posing modern-day Civil War re-enactors at locations of historic battles that are now home to car dealerships, restaurants, gas stations and strip malls.

“It’s kind of a comment on the way we’re utilizing and preserving — or not preserving — our historic sites,” said O. Winston Link Museum interim director Mike McNeil.

The exhibition of 16 large prints will remain on display in the museum’s Trackside Gallery until Sept. 3. “It’s really exciting to have such large format color work in this gallery,” McNeil said.

A contributor to publications such as Time magazine and Rolling Stone, Segal has written that as a child he would spend all day playing with toy soldiers and that photographing Civil War re-enactors was like a grown-up version of the game, and yet his intentions weren’t entirely playful. He imagines in his images that the ghosts of the Civil War have returned to the places where they fought and died, places since overrun by modern consumer culture.

McNeil said museum staff actively sought Segal’s show as an offbeat way to acknowledge the sesquicentennial of the Civil War. The History Museum of Western Virginia, the Link’s sister museum, is hosting the Virginia Historical Society’s “The American Turning Point: The Civil War in Virginia” until June 1, 2014.

Because of a shipping fluke, the Link Museum will put prints from a second grouping of Segal photographs on display next month.

Images from Segal’s “Super Heroes at Home” series were accidently included with the “State of the Union” photos. The artist is allowing the museum to make use of them for an event coordinated with Roanoke Doesn’t Suck, a quirky website that promotes Roanoke businesses.

“Super Heroes at Home” depicts street actors in Los Angeles who dress as comic book characters such as Superman, Batman and Captain America to make money posing for pictures with tourists. Segal’s pictures show them in costume while engaged in everyday tasks such as getting their mail and hanging their laundry.

Segal is allowing the museum to put the “Super Heroes” photos on display starting 6 p.m. Aug. 17 as part of a Geek Mob Roanoke organized by Roanoke Doesn’t Suck to coincide with International Read Comics in Public Day, McNeil said. The event will also feature a screening of the documentary “Confessions of a Superhero,” which features interviews with some of the street actors Segal photographed.

The superhero photos also will be on display until Sept. 3, McNeil said.

The Link Museum at 101 Shenandoah Ave. is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Sunday. Admission $5, senior citizens $4.50, children 3-11 $4. For more information, call 982-5465 or visit linkmuseum.org.

SWVA Ballet wins 1,000 Euro prize

Young dancers from Southwest Virginia Ballet in Salem have once again traveled to the New Prague Dance Festival in the Czech Republic and come back bearing trophies.

Led by artistic director Pedro Szalay, the nonprofit ballet company first set out for the festival in 2011 and collected several awards, including the first place award for classical dance. The company returned to the festival this year, held June 29 to July 5, and outdid their previous performance.

Lord Botetourt High School graduate Molly Cook, 18, won the Flower Bud Talent Award, and the company as a whole not only reclaimed first place in classical ballet but also won the Grishko Award, a 1,000 Euro prize, equivalent to more than $1,300.

Sponsored by Russia-based dance footwear and apparel manufacturer Grishko, the award is the equivalent of placing second place overall in the festival. “We were honored,” Szalay said. SVB went to the festival not with a goal of winning competitions but putting on professional-level performances, he said.

Szalay also received the third place award for best dance instructor. “The judges were very uplifting,” Szalay said, telling him “we’re preserving the classical ballet the right way.”

The ballet brought 13 dancers to Prague, five of whom performed there in 2011, including Cook, who has started training with Ballet West in Salt Lake City, Utah this summer and will study dance at University of Utah in the fall.

Dance companies from 14 countries participated in the festival, including two other troupes from the United States.

Szalay said that the festival asked SVB to return and the Salem-based ballet may do so in two or three years.

As they did in 2011, the dancers sent me daily updates on their trip that you can read at blogs.roanoke.com/arts.

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