I remember my first visit to the Royal Ontario Museum at about 8 years
old way back in the late 60's.  I vividly remember rows and rows of
goliath beetles in walnut and bronze vitrines, shining armour, huuuuge
dinosaur skeletons, and stuffed lions.  While at graduate school, I got
a summer job teaching summer classes for 8-10 year olds at the ROM.
Amazingly, I didn't remember the handcraft of those amazing artists and
craftsman as a child that was clearly evident in those same diaramas.
Only as an adult and an artist, did I come to appreciate their efforts
and skill.  I ensured as an educator that the children were given the
opportunity to appreciate the wonderful trompe l'oeil and artful
staging.

Later, I worked three long years as a security officer at the ROM.  I
had the opportunity to really study the diaramas in detail.  I also had
the opportunity to see new galleries and diaramas being planned and
constructed and eventually opened to the public.  The famous "Batcave"
is a walkthrough multisensory diarama that saw lineups on the opening
day of thousands, and a near riot as security carefully regulated access
to a dozen or so people every 10 minutes.  The batcave has lost some of
its novelty, but it is still a marvel of invention and wisdom with even
more clever eye tricking effects.

After "paying my dues with security" I was lucky enough to be hired as
the Program Coordinator of the same programs I taught in several years
earlier.  While coaching new teachers, I made sure that the history of
the ROM and the exhibits were part of the orientation.  Although, the
children were often made aware of the artificial environments that
housed the specimens and artifacts, in the children's paintings and
sculptures, the cases disappeared and the object and subject only
remained.  The leopard was on a mound in the savannah, the allosaurus
really attacked the stegosaurus.

One of the strategies that we used to deconstruct the museum environment
was to have the children create diaramas.  The children did not recreate
the diaramas that were in the museum, they used their own imaginations
to create new dramas, new environments, new atmospheres.

For me, the greatest testament of a museum artisan is to create the
drama for the artifacts, to aid the interpreter, the teacher, the
student in creating context for the object, and for the patron or
student to possibly retain the specimen/artifact in long term memory.
It is the object/concept that should be retained in memory.  The diarama
and artwork are in the service of this goal.  We need to make room for
new memories, new interpretations and to honour the skill of the earlier
diarama artisans by going at least one better.



Paul Toth
Educator/Artist/New Media Producer
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http://griffin.multimedia.edu/~ptoth