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.
>