[5] Paying visitors viewed the cylindrical painting from the inside, entering through an entrance in the floor.

A movie theater inside the museum showed a short film about the Atlanta Campaign to visitors before they viewed the painting.

The 14-minute film was called The Atlanta Campaign, and was directed by and narrated by James Earl Jones.

It originally premiered on May 9, 1990 and had a budget of $300,000, including a 24-foot scale model of Atlanta and a cast of 5,000 reenactors.

[2] The possibility of a move started soon after the 2008 restoration of the only other panoramic painting in the United States, the Gettysburg Cyclorama.

[5] The Cyclorama's final day open to the public was June 30, 2015, after which it closed in preparation for the move.

The History Center began construction in fall 2015 on a new 23,000-square-foot (2,100 m2) building to house the painting, the diorama and the Texas locomotive.