Muscatine Art Center?s Civil War exhibit opens June 26

MUSCATINE (AP) ? The printed word is powerful enough, but the spoken word can bring Civil War history alive.

That?s why, as the centerpiece of the Muscatine Art Center?s upcoming Civil War exhibit, something like a hologram representing Muscatine soldier Daniel J. Parvin will be shown reading from the more than 100 surviving letters Parvin wrote to his wife and family.

?Muscatine and the Civil War: A Sesquicentennial Commemoration? opens June 26.

The laser-projected image of Parvin probably won?t remind visitors of the Princess Leia hologram from ?Star Wars,? but it?s a cool special effect: Joe Pretrilla, a professional actor from New York, reads 35 excerpts from Parvin?s letters dressed in a Union soldier?s uniform and seated on a stump in front of a green screen in a New York studio.

His image is projected onto specially treated glass to make it look like he?s a part of a Civil War encampment, which is a real exhibit and features tents, trees, sand and pebbles.

The actor had two teams of directors: one in New York, and staff from the Art Center.

Art Center director Barb Christensen and other staff watched Pretrilla?s takes via Skype. That allowed Christensen and others, including registrar Virginia Cooper, to offer the actor suggestions: muss your hair and dirty your face a bit for this scene, swat some pretend mosquitoes in that scene.

One big boo-boo Christensen noticed: at one point, Pretrilla had his feet up, and the soles of his shoes showed no wear at all. Many soldiers, as students of the Civil War know, were lucky to have any shoes at all.

Put your feet on the floor, Christensen advised Pretrilla.

Cooper, Christensen and the rest of the Art Center staff are spending the weeks before the exhibit opens preparing showcases, making needed alterations and placing signs where they belong.

She said the project has been ?greatly aided? by the work of volunteers, some of whom took months to transcribe letters and render them readable to the modern eye.

According to Cooper, the museum had to borrow very few artifacts for the exhibit, which includes many items ? from weapons to manuals ? that soldiers employed during the four years of bloody fighting.

?We had so many items that I knew it was going to be monumental,? she said.