Long before sophisticated wildlife photography, artists in the field captured the color and movement of birds for the background paintings of the Museum’s dioramas. Similarly, bird taxidermists studied their subjects’ anatomy and behavior to achieve a natural effect, most dramatically in flight. Here, long-time exhibition artist Stephen C. Quinn explores the work of painters Louis Agassiz Fuertes and Francis Lee Jacques and taxidermist David Schwendeman.
Miniature Enclosure & Exacting Detail – Charles Matton
Charles Matton was a multi-talented French artist who died in 2008. Perhaps best known for “The Boxes” from the 1970’s, a series of painstakingly detailed miniature interiors. His work and experience as a painter, photographer, screen writer, and director are evident in these hauntingly movie like interiors. The lighting and depth of space in each piece lends them unique characteristics. Matton described himself as a “image maker” and it’s evident in these beautiful works.
Painted Beauties
Carl Akeley’s striped hyenas – 120 year old specimens
For being over a hundred years old they’re not in terrible shape; the conservators are focused on decreasing the chances of pest infestation in their new home, and ensuring the mounts retain stability for the next century or so. They performed x-rays to learn more about the hyena’s internal structure and discovered that Akeley left many of the limb bones intact, and at least 3 of the 4 hyenas – the ones bearing teeth – still have their original skulls. We’ll know more in the coming weeks.
The paints you see there are used selectively to smooth the animals’ outer appearances, and are only employed on the ‘audience’-facing side and as needed – as I understand it, superfluous work is a conservator’s worst enemy.
Another thing I learned in talking with the scientists working on Akeley’s mounts was about his choice to keep the sinew and dried tissue of the prey animal intact – and the same goes for the gnawed hoof. The fat is from the original animal, unprepared and uncleaned. Even though the goal is realism, we know now it’s risky business to leave (tasty) tissue in a specimen, as it attracts pests and invaders. But, thanks to our Indiegogo supporters affording us the ability to hire such conservators for our hyenas, we’re able to help prevent that sort of thing from happening in the decades to come! <3
To be honest, it just took my breath away to walk in that lab and see the hyenas up close. This project comes more ‘real’ every day and I cannot wait for the unveiling in January!
Through the Plexiglass: A History of Museum Dioramas
Habitat dioramas—the kind with a painted background, plants in the foreground, and an animated animal in mid-action—are generally credited to Carl Akeley, a taxidermist and expeditionist during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ironically, these museum displays were created, in part, to promote the conservation of the species that had been killed for display, highlighting the strange tension between animals as hunting trophies and creatures worthy of our empathy.
As Akeley saw it, though, the habitat diorama embodied a different tension, one between science and art. Akeley had become frustrated with the habitat-free, single-subject exhibition style common to most museums. If it were just about the animals, the older, curio-style displays would suffice—but Akeley wanted to give museum visitors a sense of the animal’s life, to animate the inanimate behind glass. On museum expeditions, he would measure the carcasses of his kills, preserve their hides with salt, and, once back at the museum, sculpt the animals’ musculature out of clay or plaster. Akeley’s 1890 muskrat diorama, which many consider the first specimen of the form he pioneered, is still viewable at the Milwaukee Public Museum, in an unassuming hallway near the bathroom.
The artful representation of the habitat is part of the narrative of dioramas. From the muskrats on, Akeley was careful to create animacy in his taxidermy, crafting habitats that conveyed both realism and emotion. On his plan for the American Museum of Natural History’s gorilla diorama, Akeley wrote: “I have been constantly aware of the rapid and disconcerting disappearance of African wildlife. [This] gave rise to the vision of the culmination of my work in a great museum exhibit, artistically conceived, which should perpetuate the animal life, the native customs, and the scenic beauties of Africa.” Both the real (animal skins and habitat details like plants) and the rendered (how the human artist interprets and frames the animal) work together to provide the narratives of habitat dioramas.
Around the turn of the 20th century, museum expeditions like Akeley’s hunted and killed a staggering number of animals around the world. For Americans, the timing of this newfound access to animals—transformed from from wild and possibly dangerous, creatures to mummified curios—was especially poignant. The 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition, which debuted some of the first major habitat dioramas, was also the setting of Frederick Jackson Turner’s declaration that the American West had been closed.