About Museology
“The Museum’s habitat group dioramas, located extensively throughout its halls, are among the most renowned and beloved exhibits at the Museum. With precise depictions of geographical locations and the careful, anatomically correct mounting of specimens; these stunning dioramas are windows onto a world of animals, their behavior, and their habitats. Moreover, since many of the environments represented have been exploited or degraded, some dioramas preserve places and animals, as they no longer exist. The viewer of a habitat group diorama is able to travel not only across continents, but also, in some cases, through time." –Lewis W. Bernard, Chairman of the American Museum of Natural History
The American dioramas were the creation of Carl Ackley. First unveiled in 1936, the African mammals were spectacular studies of the animal within its environment. In New York, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles, these three-dimensional worlds formed the heart of exotic memories for at least four generations. The dioramas resonated with meaning as the animals seemed completely real and at home in their setting, yet undisturbed by the presence of an endless parade of visitors, many elementary school-children with no access to these specimens outside of the museum.
The animal within the environment was a distinct break in the history of taxidermy and display. From the world of cabinet of curiosities, to that of quantity as quality in the age of discovery, to a pre-Discovery Channel generation of showing the interaction of fauna with flora, these displays were the highlight of generations for the past 70 years. Now with many specimens in need of repair and a world exposed to television, Planet Earth, and Night at the Museum, the Museum of Natural History has remodeled its African Mammal hall so that it is devoid of the romantic panoramas that defined an exotic landscape for several generations of museum visitors.
This selection of photographs, taken in 1977 and originally published in Museology (Aperture, NY 1989) and Gathering Light (2000), form a rich framework for a contemporary look at how we view the animal within (or now in the cases of Washington D.C. and San Diego, devoid of) a contextual landscape. A current world may be looking more at images within environment in the arena of a computer and filmic world, but as we enter a world of computer visualization, a sense of loss for these historical displays must be noted.