Dioramas are devices on the frontier of different disciplines: art, anthropology, and the natural sciences, to name a few. Their use developed during the nineteenth century, following reforms aimed at developing the educational dimension of museums. This book examines anthropological dioramas of two North American museums in the early twentieth century: the American Museum of Natural History in New York (whose Life Groups were assembled by the German anthropologist Franz Boas), and the New York State Museum (whose Groups were overseen by the Seneca archaeologist Arthur C. Parker). While dioramas with human figures are now the subject of harsh criticism and are gradually being dismantled, a thorough study of the work of artists and scientists who made them helps shed light on their genesis. Sites of creation and mediation of knowledge, combining painting, sculpture, photography, and material culture, dioramas tell a story that is always political. They create visions of otherness but also of ancestry that blurs space and time within the museum.
See more on the editor’s website: les presses du réel
Dioramas are devices on the frontier of different disciplines: art, anthropology, and the natural sciences, to name a few. Their use developed during the nineteenth century, following reforms aimed at developing the educational dimension of museums. This book examines anthropological dioramas of two North American museums in the early twentieth century: the American Museum of Natural History in New York (whose Life Groups were assembled by the German anthropologist Franz Boas), and the New York State Museum (whose Groups were overseen by the Seneca archaeologist Arthur C. Parker). While dioramas with human figures are now the subject of harsh criticism and are gradually being dismantled, a thorough study of the work of artists and scientists who made them helps shed light on their genesis. Sites of creation and mediation of knowledge, combining painting, sculpture, photography, and material culture, dioramas tell a story that is always political. They create visions of otherness but also of ancestry that blurs space and time within the museum.
See more on the editor’s website: les presses du réel