The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia

Located at the heart of the Museums District The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia “is the oldest natural science research institution and museum in the Americas.” Established in 1812 and opened to the public in 1828, The Academy moved to its present location on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in time for the Centennial International Exhibition of 1876.  Established “for the encouragement and cultivation of the sciences, and the advancement of useful learning,” its holdings include one of the ten largest collections of natural history specimens in the United States.  The Academy contains much to recommend it – including the Dinosaur Hall, the active fossil lab, and its contemporary educational programs and research projects. For many, the chief draw is The Academy’s collection of dioramas.  

Housed in the North American Hall, the African Hall, and the Asian Hall, The Academy’s 37 dioramas depict regional animals posed in realistic recreations of their natural environment.  I spent most of my recent visit among the dioramas in the North American Hall.  Most of the dioramas here were created in the 1920s and 30s, using specimens collected through institution funded expeditions and research. 

The North American Hall is a dark and quiet space.  Lit by the glow from the diorama cases, the hall seems a bit mysterious (and for children perhaps a little frightening).  It is a shrine of sorts – a place for quiet reflection upon the natural world not unlike an art museum.  I visited on a Thursday afternoon, an hour before closing, and the hall was virtually empty – certainly not the best time for observing the behavior of others.  It is not difficult, however, to image the hall filled with children and adults captivated by these displays.  The first dioramas contain animals familiar to Pennsylvania, including Black Bears, White Tail Deer, Beavers, Squirrels, Opossums and Striped Skunks.  If you’ve lived in the country, or even on the edges of the city, you likely have more than a passing familiarity with these creatures (and to see them somewhere other than my trash can is nice).  Despite the familiarity of the specimens. these exhibits trigger awe and reverence, through proximity and through an awareness of the craftsmanship involved in the creation of the scene.  The power of the diorama is reinforced in the more exotic displays that fill the rest of the hall.  In these displays the Kodiak Brown Bear, the cliff-dwelling Dall Sheep, the majestically horned Caribou, and the elegant and dangerous Polar Bear are presented close enough for inspection and in expertly constructed environments.  

In Museums, Media and Cultural Theory, Michelle Henning charts the origins and influence of the diorama. A reaction to the overcrowded and impenetrable quality of the Victorian-era natural history museum, the diorama served to organize the content of the natural history museum and make it accessible to the modern viewer. She places the diorama’s emergence “at the point of the decline in popularity of natural history as a practice,” when institutions began to move away from creating science through research toward presenting established scientific ideas.  As institutions began to view “education as the dissemination of already-formed facts and ideas to as large a public as possible” the diorama became a valuable tool in presenting the natural world to a mass audience (46).  The diorama directs the gaze of the increasingly distracted modern visitor, directing “visitors toward a particular understanding of nature whilst, at the same time, positioning them as consumers” of the natural world, rather than active participants (50).  Dioramas replace “the bodily experience of being in nature” and “position the visitor as a solitary spectator…privileged to examine in detail a scene that may have otherwise existed momentarily, or possibly not at all for the human viewer” (51-52).

 As The Smart Set’s Jesse Smith observed in a recent article: “[F]or all their power as symbols of science museums, [dioramas] have strong nods to their art counterparts...their rectangular proportions suggest works of art, [and the] benches in the center of their halls suggest the kind of reflection one is more likely to have” in an art museum than a natural science museum…issues of art and science, and art versus science, often come up in discussions of dioramas.”  The Academy’s website describes their dioramas as “a distinctive fusion of art and science” and “early versions of virtual reality,” marking the diorama’s dual origins and primary function.  Both educational and entertaining, dioramas draw from a number of influences outside the realm of natural science, including panoramic paintings, photography (“a snapshot of a time and place”), and window display advertisements.  Further, “For many, dioramas provided their only opportunity to experience distant places and exotic wildlife.”

Each diorama in composed of three elements – the specimen, the landscape, and the background.   The specimens are the most important part of the display.  They are extremely life-like and are arranged in action (or mid-action) poses.  In many of the dioramas, the main animal is placed with creatures that share its environment.   Sometimes the relationship between animals is friendly, other times it reflects the brutal relationship between predator and prey.  The second feature of the diorama is the landscape.  A specimen is placed in a physical recreation of its natural habitat.  The diorama containing the Bighorn Sheep and the Collard Peccary is particularly complex, containing all the sand and rock, and low scrub flowers and towering cactus one would expect from their arid desert environment.  The final element is the painted background.  This concave painting adds depth to the scene, and is the most perceptibly artificial component of the diorama.  For all of the three-dimensional authenticity of the diorama’s foreground, the painted background is a two-dimensional reminder that what you are seeing is an illusion.  

In short, “The diorama marshals these technologically produced effects of the real into a coherent composition.  In doing so, it manages to be simultaneously modern and popular, addressing a visitor reconfigured as a consumer, and carrying an (apparently) morally uplifting conservationist message, mixing scientific veracity with popular illusionism” (52). 

Combining the techniques of natural history with popular amusement, the enormously popular diorama helped, for better and worse, shape perceptions of the natural world.  They are certainly problematic.  The Academy’s website touches on some of the diorama's issues.  “Today, most museum visitors won't approve of the killing of animals required for the creation of these displays.”  Indeed, the popularity of taxidermy seems to have been waning for quite some time (perhaps since the release of Psycho…).  Henning observes the ways in which “illusionist scenarios” obscure the cruelty of the exhibit, the idyllic scenes eclipsing the fact that animals have been captured and killed.  This is certainly at work in the North American Hall, though several dioramas here depict the cruelty inherent in the relationship between predator and prey.  

The website also observes that “dioramas played a major role in the celebration of Americans in their natural heritage and increased their awareness and appreciation of the loss of wilderness.  The rise of the Conservation Movement and the popularity of dioramas went hand-in-hand.”  This is certainly true, but as Henning points out this was not always a good thing, and if dioramas brought a greater understanding of the need for conservation they also helped legitimize U.S. nationalism, imperialism, and racism.  The questionable ethnography of New York’s American Museum of Natural History dioramas is not present in the North American Hall, however The Academy’s dioramas remain symbols of conquest and colonialism as well as conservation.