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The dioramas within the American Museum of Natural Hisotry is the work of renowned naturalists, artists, photographers, taxidermists and other museum personnel who have all blended their talents. These dioramas can be found in halls throughout the museum. These world famous dioramas represent an unparalleled melding of art and science, "designed to nurture a reverence for nature by creating an illusion of its beauty and grandeur" ; the dioramas recreate a specific site shown at a particular moment in the day and season of the year, combining the arts of taxidermy, model-making, painting, and lighting: "behind the glass, all of nature is locked in an instant of time for our close examination and study". Born in an era of black-and-white photography, when wildlife photography was in its earliest stages, the dioramas have themselves become major historic attractions. Notable among them is the Akeley Hall of African Mammals which opened in 1936. The enormous hall with its muted lighting creates a reverential space that showcases the vanishing wildlife of Africa, in spaces where the human presence is notably absent. A herd of eight enormous elephants appear to pause in the middle of the room, drawn protectively together and assessing the visitor's presence, while along the perimeter 28 brilliantly lighted windows usher the viewer into a world that many will never personally see. The hall is faced with in dark serpentinite, a volcanic stone that deepens the contrast with the diorama windows. Some of the displays are up to 18 feet (5 m) in height and 23 feet (7 m) in depth. Carl Akeley was an outstanding taxidermist employed at the Field Museum in Chicago when the American Museum of Natural History sent him to Africa to collect elephant hides. Akeley fell in love with the rainforests of Africa and decried the encroachment of farming and civilization into formerly pristine natural habitats. Fearing the permanent loss of these natural areas, Akeley was motivated to educate the American public by creating the hall that bears his name. Akeley died in 1926 from infection while exploring the Kivu Volcanoes in his beloved Belgian Congo, an area near to that depicted by the hall's magnificent gorilla diorama. With the 1942 opening of the Hall of North American Mammals, diorama art reached a pinnacle. It took more than a decade to create the scenes depicted in the hall which includes a 432 square foot (40 mē) diorama of the American bison. Today, although the art of diorama has ceased to be a major exhibition technique, dramatic examples of this art form are still occasionally employed. In 1997 museum artists and scientists traveled to the Central African Republic to collect samples and photographs for the construction of a 3,000 square foot (300 mē) recreation of a tropical West African rainforest, the Dzanga-Sangha rain forest diorama in the Hall of Biodiversity. Other notable dioramas, some dating back to the 1930s have recently been restored in the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life. The hall is a 29,000 square foot (2,700 sq m) bi-level room that includes a delicately mounted 94 foot (29 m) long model of a blue whale swimming beneath and around video projection screens and interactive computer stations. The entire room is bathed in a blue shimmering light that gives a distinct feel of the vast oceans of our world. Among the hall's notable dioramas are the 'sperm whale and giant squid', which represents a true melding of art and science since an actual encounter between these two giant creatures at over one half mile depth has never been witnessed. Another celebrated diorama in the hall represents the 'Andros coral reef' in the Bahamas, a two-story-high diorama that features the land form of the Bahamas and the many inhabitants of the coral reef found beneath the water's surface. Content Attribution (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License) |
Local Tours of New York City
Check out some of the Local Tours of New York City that you may want to pre-book for your trip.Return to Manhattan Travel Guide,
New York City Travel Guide,
or to United States Travel Guide
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