Many of the great diorama artists have passed on leaving their work as
testament to the good old days when museum dioramas wrenched a silent
"wow" to those of us "boomers" who as elementry school students
struggled with papier mache on our kitchen tables for a school project
in geography.
Our benchmarks were some we'd seen in the Ashmoleanesque crystal
cathedrals in the 30's,40's 50's. For me it was the Redpath Museum at
McGill University and the Chateau de Ramasay in Old Montreal, the Met in
New York ,the Royal Ontario Museum. I am sure you will recall your
favorites.
 These dioramas should not be at our mercy bound for the dumpster.We are
the caretakers. It's reality that storage space for most of us is at a
premium.
Unless you have ever built a diorama, I caution you before pitching to
think of the future generations of young visitors who might get a "wow"
when an old diorama is hauled out of the cupboard .
Ann Murray said it in a song, "everything old is new again".
We at the North Carolina Museum of History brought out an old oak case
and filled it with simple artifacts from our first collection ;the type
was done on an 1930's Underwood as our founder Colonel Olds would have
done and it draws a lot of visitors.
At the Museum of Natural History  next door the same era of cases exist
and I've suggested they hang on to them and their  dioramas as a
touchstone to just how far they have come to reach the 90's. Their
museum began in a hardware with one whale skeleton and staegically
placed spitoons.

I am sure if they and we display our old dioramas we will draw the awe
of young visitors and the young at heart who are bombarded with the
slick imagery we think the visitor is looking for today.

Save the "ramas"

Len Hambleton - Chief Conservator
North Carolina Museum of History
5 East Edenton Street
Raleigh NC. 27601-1011
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919-715-0200 x244
"Information in the spirit of sharing,catch the wave!"

Opinions expressed in this message may not represent the policy of my
agency

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Robertson [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, May 04, 1998 11:35 AM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Re: bye bye dioramas
>
> Banff National Park has a "museum of a museum" -- a 1930s-style &
> philosophy museum preserved in that form, & interpreted as such. Shows
> modern visitors the changing attitudes to wildlife & national parks
> over
> time.
>
> Never been to the Smithsonian, unfortunately, but if I get to visit, I
> hope
> I'd see a modern, effective public gallery -- not just a museum of a
> museum. I like dioramas (the Provincial Museum of Alberta in Edmonton
> has a
> bunch of them) but if the people running the Smith. have thought
> through
> their interpretation & found a better way to present their messages,
> then
> "bye bye!" to the old media. Maybe move one diorama somewhere else in
> the
> museum to interpret how museums used to be (if that actually is a
> story
> they want to interpret), or sell/give them to other museums if they
> are a
> useful way of presenting the stories of those other museums.
>
> Museums would choke on their own waste if every exhibit had to be
> preserved
> as "works of art, artifacts of earlier times".
>
>
>
> Brwnbottom <[log in to unmask]> wrote in article
> <[log in to unmask]>...
> > Why is the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History planning
> to
> > demolish and not replace the dioramas in their Mammals exhibit
> halls?
> >
> > Dioramas should be considered museum works of art, artifacts
> themselves
> of
> > earlier times - not things to destroy in the name of political
> correctness and
> > post modernist theory.
> >