From their very first appearance in science mu- 

 seums in the late 1800s, dioramas have been 

 designed to nurture a reverence for nature. 

 The best ones duplicate the wonder of an intimate, 

 personal encounter with a real creature in its habi- 

 tat. Many visitors come away transformed by the 

 simulated wilderness world: A silverback mountain 

 gorilla pounds its chest in a threatening display of 

 dominance. An immense bull walrus rears up to sur- 

 vey its retuge on an Arctic ice floe. A giant brown 

 bear stands in alarm before a panorama of spectacu- 

 lar Alaskan mountain peaks. Birds soar in suspend- 

 ed animation. Clouds hover motionless in azure blue 

 skies. Behind the glass, time stops, and all of nature 

 is locked in an instant for the viewer to examine. 



Dioramas were born in an era when him and wild- 

 lite photography were in their infancy. In a sense, 

 though, they leap ahead of those technologies to 

 combine two- and three-dimensional elements in- 

 to a form ot "virtual reality." The classic habitat dio- 

 rama is encased in an alcove with a windowlike frame 

 or theaterlike proscenium that limits sight lines and 

 conceals peripheral vanishing points. The scene it- 

 self is made up of three artistic components: taxi- 

 dermy specimens; a foreground that encompasses all 

 of the three-dimensional elements of the diorama 

 other than the taxidermy; and the curved back- 

 ground painting, which is critical to the overall illu- 

 sion of space, distance, and environment. 



The American Museum of Natural History 

 (AMNH) m New York City played a leading 

 role in the development of the habitat diorama as a 

 tool for science education. In its earliest years the 

 museum's exhibition halls on zoology were made 

 up of vast displays of its collections, with a focus on 

 taxidermy specimens. But in time, the museum's 

 visitors, curators, and scientists became dissatisfied 

 with displays of specimens only. The view that noth- 

 ing in nature originates in isolation, but comes in- 

 stead out of complex interrelationships, also spurred 

 the development of the habitat diorama. 



The earliest dioramas at AMNH did not feature 

 large, charismatic mammals, hut rather depicted a 



Libyan Desert diorama (left), at the American Museum of 

 Natural History (AMNH), features three addaxes (far left), 

 a scimitar-horned oryx (middle left), and a dama gazelle 

 (near left). The "tie-in" between the foreground scene and 

 the background painting has been cleverly disguised by 

 the detailing of the shadows. 



This cuticle i.< adapted from Stephen Christopher Quinn's forthcoming 

 booh, Windows on Nature: The Great Habitat Dioramas of the 

 American Museum of Natural History, which is being published 

 this month by Abrams, New York, in association with the American 

 Museum ol Natural History, 



April 2006 NATURAl HISTORY 49 



