The Academy of Natural Sciences

     Yesterday, our class visited the Academy of Natural Sciences on the Ben Franklin Parkway. The Academy is the picture of a natural science museum, populated by dinosaur bones, dioramas, excited children and disinterested parents. Entering the building, a visitor is immediately confronted by the skeleton of an immense aquatic dinosaur, and the sight of this bus-sized skeleton is both intimidating and awe-inspiring. As such, the first room I (and just about every other student) was compelled to enter was the dinosaur hall. Here are displayed numerous skeletons of dinosaurs which fill me with a childlike sense of wonder. Some of the bones are put into action poses and placed over primordial backdrops. The aquatic ones even have an accompanying ocean sound effect which seems to loop indefinitely. This hall was of great  interest to me, because so much is said so matter-of-factly about these creatures that nobody has ever seen alive.
     After looping through the dinosaur hall, I found myself in the African and Asian halls. The placards make me wonder what savage lands these must be! It is interesting to note at this point that the Academy didn't seem to me to be organized in a way to command visitors into following a path, but rather it encourages some wandering and exploration. Even when dioramas were neatly aligned, I still felt compelled to follow a winding path.
     The dioramas are of great interest, as they make up the majority of the museum and are it's most important displays. Numerous glass-walled rooms lined the halls of the African, Asian, and North American exhibits. In them were displays of animals, which seemed to be quite alive despite their absolute lack of movement. The animals were placed into settings which were meant to reinforce their realism and make the viewer believe this is their natural setting. Oddly, while the animals and fake plants were quite convincing, the backdrops over which they were set were painted without much regard to detail. It seemed as though the backdrops were intentionally left unrealistic. The animals were grouped with their respective species, and what's more they were all posed to be facing out at the visitor. This, to me, made it look even less realistic. The fact that they were posed for and by humans was just too strikingly obvious.
    I found it surprising that humans were not present in any of the dioramas. What's even stranger is that humans were shown multiple times in the dinosaur hall, where the exhibits would draw comparisons between the anatomy of dinosaurs and humans. It was odd that they would put humans into this exhibit, because nothing even resembling humans existed when dinosaurs walked the earth. Despite this, no humans could be found in the dioramas of animals that are not yet extinct. Perhaps people were removed from these exhibits to avoid some of the racial controversies we have learned about. I could not help but wonder if the dioramas really were a good way of displaying nature. While I may not know of a better way, I feel that dioramas try to trick the viewer into believing they are totally true and natural, but in fact, they are just man-made constructions and settings. As such, they aren't a great way of displaying natural history, but they probably could be worse.

A portrait of Joseph Leidy, "The last man who knew everything," sat in the dinosaur hall.

His contributions make up a portion of the museum's displays.