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Re-inventing dioramas

Are dioramas old-fashioned, outmoded, quaint and even embarrassing? Or do they embody everything that is engaging and memorable about a museum visit: the opportunity to be transported to a different time and place and to learn through immersion and investigation, turning visitors into more active participants? This session will explore the mixed reactions that dioramas inspire and their possible role in the 21st century museum as displays and learning tools.

Dioramas present many challenges and opportunities for museums. They are complex exhibitions to design, maintain and interpret. By inviting visitors to explore a highly visual and immersive environment, they are often popular displays, providing context to science but also blurring boundaries between what is real and what is staged, what is a story and what is science.

This session will bring different perspectives from museum professionals and academics on the topic, hoping to spark debate and discussions with the audience.

Facilitator

Raphael Chanay
Exhibitions and Interpretation Manager
The Natural History Museum
London
United Kingdom

Session speakers

Jessica Bradford
Interpretation Manager
Science Museum Group
London
United Kingdom
Twitter
As part of the Science Museum’s ambitious new Medicine Galleries project, we are developing ‘twenty-first century dioramas’: life-size three-dimensional recreations of medical scenes which use innovative digital media to bring to life extraordinary medical procedures. We are drawing on extensive audience research of existing dioramas in the museum to understand the potential of this format for engaging with the history and present of medicine.
Annekathrin Ranft
Wissenschaftliche Volontärin / curatorial trainee
Deutsches Museum
Munich
Germany
For the new optics exhibition at the Deutsches Museum, the format of dioramas will be used to inform about the cultural history of optics. Three different scenes are envisaged (ancient Greece – medieval Arabian region – early modern times) to illustrate the changing view on theory of vision, and the importance of joint contributions for its progress. A brief historic overview of dioramas displayed at our museum since its foundation years will allow for comparing old and new design strategies.
Annette Scheersoi
Professor, Biology Education
Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms-Universität
Bonn
Germany
Natural history dioramas were historically designed to evoke feelings and to promote an ethic for the preservation of species and their habitats. Nowadays, they are often dismantled, being claimed that they are old-fashioned. However, these settings have a tremendous educational potential: Natural history dioramas draw attention to both species and habitats, they evoke emotions and curiosity about the natural world and thereby provide ideal initial conditions for developing biological understanding in an out-of-school-setting. They can be accessed and interpreted in different ways according to the highly variable scientific knowledge, interests and experiences of the visitors and may be even used to learn about actual/modern biological themes such as biodiversity or climate change.