{"id":258217,"date":"2025-03-13T10:54:27","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T10:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/13\/does-your-natural-history-museum-need-a-makeover\/"},"modified":"2025-03-13T10:54:27","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T10:54:27","slug":"does-your-natural-history-museum-need-a-makeover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/13\/does-your-natural-history-museum-need-a-makeover\/","title":{"rendered":"Does your natural history museum need a makeover?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Does<\/div>


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At first glance, it\u2019s a simple scene. Six adult bison and a calf mill around a stream. But if you look closer, the plot thickens.<\/p>\n

Beside a well-worn path to the stream sits a bison skull. This herd has clearly been dropping by for some time. And they\u2019re playing a key role in the ecosystem. Scattered birds feast on bugs kicked up by the bison.<\/p>\n

Peer into the trees on the scene\u2019s far right, and you might even spot what only one bison has noticed. Two wolves lurk, eyeing their next meal.<\/p>\n

\u201cDioramas, they have such rich stories,\u201d says Matt Davis. He develops exhibits in California at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. That\u2019s where this bison diorama is displayed.<\/p>\n

Imagine, Davis says, seeing this scene when the museum\u2019s first diorama hall opened in 1925. TV didn\u2019t exist yet. Full-color movies were still brand new. For many city dwellers, dioramas were the only way to see animals as they might live.<\/p>\n

In many dioramas, taxidermied animals are arranged in scenes meant to resemble their natural habitats. The foreground is filled with props such as fake rocks and grass, and a curved painting provides the background. <\/span>Rick Colls\/Alamy Stock Photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It might be like an extreme virtual-reality<\/a> experience today, Davis says. \u201cPeople were totally blown away.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you’ve ever been to a natural history museum, you\u2019ve likely seen the diorama hall. These big rooms often feature groups of animals. Some display models of people, staged in lifelike poses against painted backdrops. In fact, it might be hard to picture a museum without them.<\/p>\n

But these exhibits have a complex and often troubling history. Diorama builders have historically gotten their materials by taking advantage of the places the animals come from. And some designers created displays that, to modern eyes, are inaccurate or offensive. Plus, some museum visitors today simply find dioramas dull or even creepy.<\/p>\n

\"In
In this 1966 photo, artist and explorer Belmore Browne paints a glacier for a diorama of mountain goats. The goats are on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.<\/span>AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This \u201cdiorama dilemma\u201d is forcing modern museums to reconsider how they present exhibit such scenes. Some museums have reduced or removed them. Other curators and artists are playing with new diorama formats. Still others are reframing old dioramas to address misleading or racist depictions.<\/p>\n

What this means: Diorama halls of the future might look a bit different from those you grew up with.<\/p>\n

This revamp \u201cneeds to happen,\u201d says Aaron Smith. He\u2019s director of exhibits at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

The new age of museum makeovers doesn\u2019t spell an end for dioramas. For decades, these displays have evoked a sense of \u201cawe and wonder,\u201d Smith says. \u201cThat still exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dioramas\u2019 troubled history<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s hard to pinpoint the very first dioramas. Charles Willson Peale made one of the earliest<\/a> in the 1780s. Peale practiced taxidermy. That\u2019s the craft of stuffing dead animals to preserve them with a lifelike appearance.<\/p>\n

At his own home, Peale set up a mound of earth covered with turf and trees, plus a fake pond. There, he placed taxidermied birds, snakes, a tiger and other specimens.<\/p>\n

\"1896
Taxidermist and big-game hunter Carl Akeley was photographed in Ethiopia in 1896 after he killed a leopard \u2014 reportedly with his bare hands. Akeley created some of the earliest museum dioramas.<\/span>C.E. AKELEY\/\u00a9FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By the early 1900s, natural history museums started making habitat exhibits like this. These dioramas were often created by taxidermists who led hunting trips to shoot the most spectacular specimens \u2014 including endangered animals.<\/p>\n

Hunters saw their work as one way to preserve the last of disappearing species<\/a>. They also hoped these dioramas would inspire viewers to conserve the animals that remained in the wild. But they were killing endangered animals to do this. And in many cases, the hunting trips offered an excuse for rich, white men to get out their guns and kill big game for sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of this was boys with their toys,\u201d says Marjorie Schwarzer. She wrote the book Riches, Rivals and Radicals: A History of Museums in the United States<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Sometimes hunters recognized the conflict between their hunting trips and the goal of conserving species. Carl Akeley was one example.<\/p>\n

He shot mountain gorillas in what was then the Belgian Congo. The experience changed him. He persuaded the king of Belgium to set up Africa\u2019s first wildlife sanctuary. Today, it\u2019s called Virunga National Park. It\u2019s home to some 350 endangered mountain gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/a><\/p>\n

Diorama-maker William Temple Hornaday also had a change of heart. He went to Montana in 1886 to collect bison for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. On that trip, he was shocked by how fast the bison population was shrinking. So he brought live animals back to D.C. In 1889, they became the first animals in what would become its National Zoo.<\/p>\n

\"Plant
Not all early trips to gather diorama materials were about big-game hunting. Researchers collected plants, insects and other specimens too. Many of these explorers were women. The plants shown here were collected by botanist Alice Eastwood. Such samples went into museum collections and could guide the creation of realistic habitats for dioramas.<\/span>A. Eastwood\/Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Are dioramas worth saving?<\/h2>\n

A century later, museums were starting to wonder if dioramas still had value. Many were unscientific. For instance, they tended to overuse large male animals and overlook females. Dioramas also had to compete with new multimedia exhibits.<\/p>\n

In the early 2000s, some museums scrapped or cut back on dioramas. Others tried to modernize them with interactive parts and animatronics. But those choices weren\u2019t always rooted in any science on the value of dioramas.<\/p>\n

The Oakland Museum of California took a different approach. It asked Schwarzer and a curator to study people\u2019s reactions to dioramas. The pair looked at 30 studies of more than 3,800 people viewing dioramas at 17 institutions.<\/p>\n

In 2009, the researchers came up with\u00a0a strong case for<\/em> dioramas<\/a>. It turns out that the displays are second only to dinosaurs in getting visitors to stop and look.<\/p>\n

\"a
Research has shown that most museum visitors really like dioramas. <\/span>California Academy of Sciences<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dioramas didn\u2019t change how people felt about conservation, the study found. But they did reinforce concerns people already had about the environment. They also sparked a range of emotions. Some viewers felt creeped out by dead animals. But most people loved these exhibits.<\/p>\n

Museum staff see similar responses today. \u201cI do walk-throughs all the time of the museum, and I can hear the \u2018Whooooaaaa!\u2019 \u201d says Mariana Di Giacomo. She\u2019s a natural-history conservator at the Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven, Conn. The Peabody\u2019s oldest and largest dioramas show Connecticut\u2019s coastal region and a forest edge.<\/p>\n

Chicago\u2019s Field Museum recently got public support to finish a diorama started more than a century ago. Akeley had mounted four striped hyenas shot in 1896. But they never got the full scenic treatment. In 2015, the museum launched a social-media campaign to finish the project. In just six weeks, some 1,500 donors raised more than $150,000.<\/p>\n

Gretchen Baker led planning for the museum\u2019s exhibits at the time. \u201cIt showed us that there is an enduring interest in these dioramas,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"Four
These striped hyenas were collected by Carl Akeley in the late 1800s. After the Field Museum\u2019s crowdfunding effort in 2015, they finally got the full diorama treatment.<\/span>JOHN WEINSTEIN\/\u00a9FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Battling biases<\/h2>\n

Dioramas\u2019 eye-catching nature gives them great storytelling potential. Unfortunately, the stories many tell are not entirely scientific.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people have called them, in the past, \u2018bad science\u2019 because they personify animals,\u201d Schwarzer says. Many dioramas, for example, show animal groups that include a mom, dad and babies. But many species don\u2019t live that way. Papa bear does not stick around to help raise the cubs. Indeed, Schwarzer says, \u201cPapa bear might eat a couple of the cubbies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some exhibits misrepresent female animals<\/a>, too, Baker notes. She now directs the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pa. One diorama there shows a female moose standing in water. This makes her look shorter than the male on land.<\/p>\n

Females are often the ones who lead animal groups in the wild. But Baker observes that they don\u2019t usually take charge in dioramas. Likewise, homosexuality exists in nature but rarely shows up in dioramas.<\/p>\n

In many cases, designers likely wanted to show the different forms of the animals, says Mark Alvey. He works at Chicago\u2019s Field Museum. Mom-dad-baby groups offer an easy way to show adult males, adult females and young all at once.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always knew it was wrong,\u201d Davis says. \u201cNow, we\u2019re slowly trying to fix some of those things.\u201d For example, the L.A. museum has added more females to its lion pride.<\/p>\n

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Do you have a science question? We can help!<\/h2>\n

Submit your question here<\/a>, and we might answer it an upcoming issue of Science News Explores<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The human element<\/h2>\n

There also are problems in how people are \u2014 or aren\u2019t \u2014 depicted in dioramas.<\/p>\n

Some ignore humans completely. This erases the long-term presence of Indigenous peoples in many places. It also ignores the impacts of modern societies on the environment. And that\u2019s misleading. Today, very little of the world is untouched by humans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe kind of nature that dioramas exhibit, it\u2019s very unnatural,\u201d says Martha Marandino. A professor of biology education, she works at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo in Brazil.<\/p>\n

\"a
Something was missing from the African Hall at the Cal Academy of Sciences: the African people. So artist Walter Kitundu created an exhibit that illustrates a storefront from the market in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where he grew up.<\/span>California Academy of Sciences<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

New York\u2019s American Museum of Natural History recently dealt with problems in its \u201cOld New York\u201d display<\/a>. Made in 1939, it shows a fictitious 1660 meeting between a Dutch leader and high-ranking members of the Lenape Tribe. The Lenape people were the original residents of the land that would become Manhattan.<\/p>\n

Stereotypes riddle the display. Only Lenape men are in on the discussion. And they wear loincloths. That\u2019s not how they would have dressed for a diplomatic meeting. Plus, only the Dutch leader, Peter Stuyvesant, was named in the original display.<\/p>\n

In 2018, curators added labels to explain problems with this display. They also added the name of the Lenape leader Oratamin.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, this type of reframing isn\u2019t enough to fix a diorama\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n

Take \u201cLion Attacking a Dromedary<\/a>.\u201d (A dromedary is a type of camel.) This display, created in 1867, showed a dark-skinned man on camelback under attack by lions. One lion was male, even though it\u2019s generally females who hunt. Worse, the man was dressed in a mishmash of clothes that represented no specific culture. To top it all off, the mannikin head held a real human skull.<\/p>\n

The whole display had been created by known grave robbers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not educating anyone on anything that ever existed,\u201d points out Aja Lans. She\u2019s an archaeologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md.<\/p>\n

Andrew Carnegie bought the diorama in 1899 for his museum in Pittsburgh. In recent years, staff have tried putting up warning signs, so people could avoid the diorama. They also added labels to point out its problems.<\/p>\n

Then, in 2020, a white police officer murdered a Black man, George Floyd, and sparked a nationwide conversation about racism.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis diorama was kind of like a poster child for all of these questions that were coming up,\u201d Baker says. \u201cIt was kind of this symbol of a time in natural history museums when we would display the other \u2014 the exotic \u2014 the colonized.\u201d That summer, the museum covered the display completely.<\/p>\n

In 2023, the museum chose to no longer display human remains at all. So it shut down this diorama for good. It\u2019s now being taken apart. Lans and colleagues are analyzing bits of teeth from the skull to pin down its origins. The museum hopes to return it to the country where the man grew up.<\/p>\n

\"Brightly
The \u201cSpecial Species\u201d exhibit uses Mexican folk art and an immersive multimedia display to highlight at-risk species in California.<\/span>Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dioramas for a new age<\/h2>\n

Back in Los Angeles, upstairs from the bison is a revamped diorama hall. It shows some drastically different scenes.<\/p>\n

One, called \u201cSpecial Species,\u201d pulses with changing lighting and bright colors. It\u2019s home to pi\u00f1ata-style sculptures of at-risk California critters. There\u2019s the Chinook salmon, for example, and the desert tortoise. The sculptures are in the style of fantastical Mexican creatures called alebrijes<\/em>. (You might have seen some animals like these in the film Coco.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Artist Jason Chang, who goes by RFX1, was on the team that created the diorama. He hopes viewers will walk away with \u201can urgency to protect the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSpecial Species\u201d is just one part of the exhibit \u201cReframing Dioramas: The Art of Preserving Wilderness<\/a>.\u201d This project highlights dioramas\u2019 historical importance while adding modern science. \u201cIt\u2019s a hall on dioramas, not a hall of dioramas,\u201d Davis explains.<\/p>\n

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