The nature dioramas at the Illinois State Museum I mentioned
in my recent column about such displays “Making
dead hyenas come alive”) do not offer the bravura displays of taxidermy that one sees at the Field Museum in
Chicago. While Robert Larson, who painted the background murals for the big displays
is well known at least by museum staff standards, I don’t recall that any of
the taxidermists achieved such recognition.
I have the feeling, backed up by no
research whatsoever, that many of the dioramas were designed built around
specimen mounts already in the collection. I particularly recall the recumbent adult wolf that is one of the three who are the centerpiece of the
Forest of the Shawnee Hills diorama having been in an unadorned glass cabinet in the late
1950s when I first saw it.
The man chiefly responsible for there being
dioramas at the museum at all was chief Dr. Alja R. Crook, who is
generally credited with being the person responsible for transforming the
Illinois State Museum into a modern institution. Its expansion into new quarters
in the 1920s in the then-Centennial Building’s fifth floor and basement
permitted the display of those life-sized natural history dioramas that so
entranced me as a boy on my visits in the 1950s. Thousands will find it
ghoulish, but a diorama showing Crook in his natural habitat, defending his
laboratory against legislators howling outside the windows, would not be out of place, men like Crook being rare specimens themselves.
This article appears in May 7-13, 2015.
