The American Museum Journal 



Vol. XIII MARCH, 1913 No. 3 



ART IN A NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM 



WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO MURAL DECORATIONS 

 IN THE INDIAN HALLS 



STRANGERS in the American Museum knowing only the old type of 

 natural history museum might well ask how it comes about that 

 an institution of science contains so much that is art. The ex- 

 planation is not far to find. It lies in this particular museum's conscious 

 educational trend by which it attempts to make its exhibits attract the 

 masses of people, who are without scientific training and probably have no 

 especial scientific interests. If any non-compulsory educational institu- 

 tion is to prove effective, it must give the knowledge it wishes to impart a 

 guise of unusual fascination. 



This fact has been realized by the Museum, particularly during the past 

 dozen years. In consequence, artists and sculptors have been brought in 

 to cooperate with the scientist, as for example in the panoramic bird 

 groups, which have attracted world-wide attention. In fact the so-called 

 ''group" method of exhibition has produced what in some cases may well 

 be termed works of art, a new type of story-telling "picture" consisting of 

 real landscape — a site selected and reproduced for artistic as well as 

 scientific reasons — blending with an artist's canvas. 



Attractiveness however has not been the only motive underlying the 

 evolution of the present American Museum. A display of specimens, in 

 cases, unrelated, is not only uninviting, it is also uninstructiye in that it 

 tells only a small part of the truth. It can convey no idea of the life, in the 

 instance either of animals or of primitive man. Thus the "group," which 

 shows animals in relation to each other and to their native haunt, stands 

 for manifolded power to convey knowledge. 



But unfortunately the group idea when used to depict the life of primi- 

 tive man, although it keeps its instructiveness as seen in the Eskimo groups 

 in the North Pacific hall and the Indian groups in the Woodlands and 

 Plains halls, tends to lose in artistic value. The Museum has not the space 

 to isolate sufficiently groups of the size that these must be, the visitor 

 must approach too near, and besides the difficulties inherent in the con- 

 struction of the groups can scarcely be overcome. Human habitat groups 

 call for the world's first talent to handle composition, color and light and 

 still more to model the human figures and represent them not for form 

 alone as in a masterpiece of bronze or marble but with the confusion of 

 the motley color of realism added. 99 



