By Amber Dance. Six adult bison and a calf mill around a stream. But Matt Davis invites me to look closer. A well-worn path leads to the stream, and a bison skull sits to the side; this herd has been dropping by for some time. Perched atop that skull and scattered around the scene are birds that feast on bugs kicked up by the bison. Then Davis encourages me to step to the left. Two wolves lurk, eyeing their next meal.
For many city dwellers, the new dioramas were the only way to see animals as they might live. Dioramas presented lifelike scenes in a manner that earlier museum exhibits did not. While museums once used skeletons and other specimens to emphasize the classification of animals and their evolutionary relationships, dioramas — characterized by rich backgrounds, detailed foregrounds and a mix of taxidermied animals arranged as if they were alive and interacting — emphasized the nascent science of ecology in a way that spoke to viewers at an emotional level.
Over the decades, though, dioramas have become dusty museum pieces themselves. These time capsules preserve the thinking of their time, including some biases that can be scientifically inaccurate , like an overemphasis on prize male specimens. And taxidermied still lifes must compete for attention in a multimedia world. Indeed, by , many museums were wondering if they should toss their dioramas as old-fashioned space-hogs that stretched the truth in the name of storytelling.
The displays were considered dull or downright creepy by some museum visitors; others criticized the echoes of an age when wealthy, white, male hunters grabbed fauna from native habitats to put on display. Others, recognizing the powerful hold that dioramas can still have on visitors, kept the displays in place.
In LA and elsewhere, curators and artists are experimenting with novel formats. At some institutions, curators are wrestling with challenges that come up when humans are depicted in offensive or blatantly racist manners. Sometimes, it turns out, no amount of effort can make historical dioramas fit the modern age. Later natural history displays would be influenced by the evolution of other forms of popular entertainment.
