A Curatorial Perspective on Two Objects

Besides being a beautiful work in its own right, the Mule Deer group embodies many of the themes of early diorama development nationally, and at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM), specifically. Habitat group dioramas exploded in popularity in the 1920s as a way to preserve iconic species, and even whole habitats, that were rapidly disappearing. Although mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) are common throughout the American west today, in the early 1900s their numbers were so depressed that prominent conservationists like William Temple Hornaday were gravely predicting their imminent extinction.

Opened around 1930, the Mule Deer group would have felt like an unprecedented explosion of color and theatricality to most museum-going Angelenos more familiar with cases stuffed full of bones. The dramatic sunset vista introduced visitors to America’s newly established Grand Canyon National Park (1919) . Dioramas have always used art to get people to care about species and habitats. Their awe inspiring views of public lands turned museums into cathedrals of nature. Unlike today, early dioramas were explicitly fatalistic. As Hanson Puthuff, the Background Artist for the Mule Deer group, wrote in 1926, “Many of these animals are fast becoming extinct, and it is the intention of the Museum that for all time they may be preserved as seen in their native habitat for the study and enjoyment of future generations.” Thankfully, mule deer didn’t go extinct. Dioramas were a major part of the early conservation movement that saved many iconic species. Yet, this movement also put habitats behind glass, literally in the case of dioramas, and figuratively in the parks and preserves that were being drawn up all around the world. The people who had already lived in these habitats for generations were excluded both from their homelands and the artistic representations of them. The nature exalted in most early dioramas was “pristine,” even if the real world wasn’t.

The second work, a surreal photograph of Taxidermist George Adams building a model for Version 2 of the Watering Hole diorama, illustrates this tension between the actual habitat and the hand of the artist building its recreation. Many institutions fetishize the exacting scientific accuracy of their dioramas but early artists, especially those at NHM, were much more open about the aesthetic choices they made to create engaging and informative scenes. After designing the new Watering Hole group, George Adams wrote:

This habitat group was designed as a three-dimensional picture, to be balanced throughout, and contains one main center of attraction. In this case, it is a big bull shown in all of his majesty. The viewer will immediately grasp the traits of character of the elephant male. The other specimens are placed in such a position that they point up the male's importance. The curve of a tree trunk or the pose of the other animals has been used in such a way as to lead the visitor's eye back to the male. This has been worked out in such a subtle manner that one is not aware of it but is one of the things that causes a visitor to linger longer at this given group, thereby leaving a more lasting impression. It is important also to show different parts of the animal–the side of one, a back view of another. Art students, artists, sculptors and naturalists are aided particularly by this positioning of the animal because it does a much better job of teaching or telling a story. Visual education is the object of a habitat group–a lesson in natural history.

The centrality of the bull elephant might have made for an engaging composition but it probably revealed more about mid-century Americans’ focus on nuclear families than it did about elephants. Breeding herds are matriarchal, led by females. Dioramas often seem timeless, or less generously, stuck in the past. However, unlike other museums, the dioramas at NHM are updated frequently. Many groups have been revised over the last century to make them more aesthetically pleasing and scientifically accurate. The Lion diorama was updated several times to emphasize the importance of female lions in the pride. The Mule Deer group was updated with new taxidermy around 1955 and new birds in 2006. These frequent changes make NHM an excellent place to study the evolution of diorama art over time.

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