History

After twenty successful years of all-volunteer work on establishing a global network of panorama enthusiasts and professionals, the IPC General Assembly, both in 2010 in Istanbul and in 2011 in Gettysburg PA, has decided to secure its future by formalizing the IPC into a Membership Association. This was a necessary step in making the International Panorama Council sustainable and able to act in its own right as a non-government, not-for-profit organization.

The organization was founded in 1992 as the 'European Panorama Conference' in Szeged, Hungary. Since 2003 the organization is called International Panorama Council. IPC has been an informal group, established and managed by volunteers only, including a voluntary secretariat. Together with different institutional partners the board members succeeded in organizing a yearly conference right from the start, in 1992. The IPC managed to issue several newsletters per year and also engaged in campaigns for protecting endangered panoramas.

In 2007 and 2008 it started a lobbying campaign to save the endangered panorama painting and building in Innsbruck, Austria and in 2009 it was campaigning to protect the endangered Panorama Mesdag.

A further goal of the IPC is to have the most important historical panoramas listed as UNESCO World Heritage sites. A first step has been taken in July 2008 when the Panorama Waterloo was added to the Belgian tentative proposal for the UNESCO list. In February 2009 Panorama Mesdag applied for inclusion in the tentative list of The Netherlands.