Artful Dioramas of North American Mammals at the American Museum of Natural History

 

The state-of-the-art dioramas in the North American Mammal Hall of the American Museum of Natural History have been fully restored. Many of the dioramas were first created in the 1930s, and new ones have been added. An expert team of conservators and Museum artists led a masterful restoration of the realistic and artful dioramas. The dioramas are based on precise field observations, and depict scenes featuring the moose and brown bears of Alaska, cougars in the Grand Canyon, and the wolves of Gunflint Lake, Minnesota, goats, grizzly bears, among others. The exquisite backdrop paintings were created by prominent artists including Charles Abel Corwin, Hanson Duvall Puthuff, Duncan Alanson Spencer, Florence MacKenzie and Frank J. MacKenzie, and Robert Reid. The restored Hall of North American Mammals reopened October 2012.

ART of DIORAMA: Recreating Nature at the AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

When I visited the American Museum of Natural History to see the Butterfly Conservatory, I took photos of the diorama at the Hall of North American Mammals. These dioramas are created by renowned naturalists, artists, photographers, taxidermists and other museum personnel who blended their talents.

From the American Museum of natural History website:

James Perry Wilson (1889-1976), a master of artful illusion, painted the backgrounds for many of the dioramas at the Museum, including those in the Hall of North American Mammals. In addition to accurately capturing every detail, his paintings evoke the intangible feel of the places they depict. This is owed in part to Wilson's dizzyingly precise perspective, one of his signature qualities. In his dioramas the real materials of the foreground merge impeccably with the painted background, uniting the two- and three-dimensional into a seamless whole. Creating these illusions involved a great deal of research. To prepare the bison diorama, Wilson traveled to Wyoming in 1938 with a scientific specialist and another artist. There Wilson made color sketches, took photographs, and collected specimens for the foreground of the scene. On his return he painstakingly reproduced the Wyoming plains on the curved walls of the diorama. Other dioramas in the hall feature bighorn sheep, two moose locked in combat, and watchful jaguar.