This is a beautiful story - thank you for it.
Peter, the Rebernik
-----------

At 23:49 04.05.98 -0700, you wrote:
>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
>[log in to unmask]
>http://griffin.multimedia.edu/~ptoth
>
>

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