Abstract
Dioramas were once a commonly used tool for communicating the natural world to museum visitors, but in the second half of the twentieth century they fell out of fashion despite their effectiveness in interpretation. This decline was probably caused by lack of funding and space, a decline in numbers of museum taxidermists, and a rejection of what was perceived as an old style of presentation. The development of the exhibitions for the new Museum of Scotland (now the National Museum of Scotland), which opened on St Andrew’s Day in 1998, provided a unique opportunity to tell the story of long-term climatic and environmental change in Scotland since the end of the last Ice Age within a single diorama. This was a major challenge, bringing together the skills of exhibition designers, taxidermists and model makers, scene painters, lighting technicians and computer software designers. The decision to use the diorama as a tool for interpreting this particular story was taken partly because of limited available space for explaining a complex chronology and partly because the diorama offers multiple ways of interpreting the natural world beyond the immediate story being conveyed. For example, by creating interactions between plants and animals, it is also possible to use the diorama to convey messages about behaviour, adaptations, food chains and webs, and ecological associations that transcend the chronological theme. In this paper, I set out how this diorama was developed as an interpretive tool and provide an assessment of its success following the opening the Museum of Scotland in 1998.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Clarke, D. V. (1998). New things set in many landscapes: Aspects of the Museum of Scotland. Proceedings of the Antiquaries of Scotland, 128, 1–12.
McKean, C. (2000). The making of the Museum of Scotland. Edinburgh: NMS Publishing.
Morris, P. (2010). A history of taxidermy. Art, science and bad taste. Ascot: MPM Publishing.
Reiss, M. J., & Tunnicliffe, S. D. (2011). Dioramas as depictions of reality and opportunities for learning in biology. Curator: The Museum Journal, 54(4), 447–459.
Taylor, M. A., & Kitchener, A. C. (2007). Scotland’s beginnings. Scotland through time. Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland.
Tunnicliffe, S. D. (2005). What do dioramas tell visitors? A study of the history of the forests diorama at the Museum of Scotland. Current Trends in Audience Research and Evaluation, 18, 23–31.
Tunnicliffe, S. D. (2006). The importance of research to biological education. Journal of Biological Education, 40(3), 99–100.
Tunnicliffe, S. D. (2013). Animals and plants in natural history dioramas in museums: Specimens or objects? Journal of Biological Education, 47(4), 189–191.
Tunnicliffe, S. D., & Scheersoi, A. (2015). Dioramas as important tools in biological education. In S. D. Tunnicliffe & A. Scheersoi (Eds.), Natural history dioramas. History, construction and educational role (pp. 133–143). Dordrecht: Springer.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Sue Dale Tunnicliffe and Annette Scheersoi for inviting me to write this paper and to my colleagues Mike Taylor and Xerxes Mazda for their comments on an earlier draft, but above all I am most grateful to the many colleagues and contractors, mentioned above, who worked with me to make this extraordinary diorama even better than I thought it could be and helped save it when pest attacks seemed to have led to its downfall.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kitchener, A.C. (2019). Developing a Modern Diorama: Changing Habitats in Scotland Since the End of the Last Ice Age. In: Scheersoi, A., Tunnicliffe, S. (eds) Natural History Dioramas – Traditional Exhibits for Current Educational Themes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00175-9_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00175-9_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-00174-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-00175-9
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)