A century later, the panoramas of Heinrich Berann harken back to the era of Bierstadt and Moran by depicting the park landscapes in an idealized manner. After first contacting Heinrich Berann in 1972 to explore the possibility of creating park panoramas, the NPS began its formal association with him in 1987 with the publication of the North Cascades panorama. During his 50-year career, Berann painted more than 500 panoramas. However, his NPS panoramas are noteworthy for their exceptional quality. Berann, the World's foremost panoramic artist, was near the end of his career and at the height of his artistic prowess when he painted the world-class landscapes of these four U.S. National Parks.
Panoramas are a unique variety of map that transcends the boundary between cartography and art.
Despite this, the creation of panoramas has been eschewed by the mainstream cartographic community because of the highly specialized skills needed for their production and, to a lesser extent, concerns about their relaxed accuracy. Cartography's lack of interest in panoramas is hardly surprising considering the discipline's emphasis during the last several decades on the quantitative and theoretical aspects of map making. There simply has been a dearth of cartographers with the needed artistic skills and temperament to create panoramas. Thus, the business of panorama creation has been largely relegated to artists who have an affinity for landscapes, such as Berann. The number of active panoramists world-wide is rather small.