The Bell Museum

This weeks museum was an interesting experience. It is a place I had heard of before a long time ago, but had never had the opportunity of visiting. It is The Bell Museum of Natural History on the University of Minnesota east bank campus. This is one of the older buildings on the U of M campus and has housed the Bell Museum since 1872. This museum was very different from what we have been looking at since August as many people wouldn't necessarily look at it and see it as art.

Originally it was used as a place to store all of the specimens that were gathered by the science departments at the university. Eventually they began to have so much that they needed other places to store it. It was decided to start putting together dioramas. A man named T.S. Roberts, who was the director of the Bell Museum, opened the new museum in 1919. He had several people making the dioramas, and they made all of them. These artists were Bruce Haywood, Ruth Self, John Jarosz, Walter Breckenridge, and Dorothy Mierow. As you walk through the museum you can see that all of the dioramas were made by these people.

The idea of the diorama came about in the early 1800's when people started trying to recreate the natural environments that they were exploring. This was a way to educate people who were not able to see nature on their own. The diorama started out simply as animals that were mounted in a particular pose with some rocks or trees around them. This evolved into more elaborate backgrounds being added, then painted back grounds, and finally onto what we see today. The curved wall in the background that has been painted, and the foreground scene with the wild life in it. These dioramas were very popular in America in science museums, and particularly for those heavily involved in land preservation. Today people are still very interested in dioramas in terms of education about the natural environment. They are all so detailed that you feel as though you are right in the land scape with them.

When you enter the Bell Museum the first area that you pass by is called "Behind the diorama". This is a room dedicated to the history of the Bell museum and all the wonderful people who designed it's contents. In this room they show you how to make a diorama, the amount of time that it takes, and who built them. All of the dioramas in this building were made in the 1940's and 50's. What's amazing about looking at them is that you would never think they had been made such a long time ago. They look very fresh and new still.

The upper level of the museum holds a type of art gallery. In here are many paintings and sculptures by artists who like to do natural art. There was a variety of different types of art to look at. Oil paintings, photo prints, stencil drawings, and sculptures in clay and bronze. The paintings were all very beautiful. The depth and attention to detail was amazing. Some of them you felt like you could reach out and touch. They seemed to be coming right up off of the canvas.

The Bell Museum was an interesting place to visit, but it was not what I expected. I thought I was going to be walking into a stuffy old building with a bunch of old looking animals and that it would be very boring. Thankfully it was not. It was nice to be able to look so closely at the animals, and in reading the plaques on the wall I feel that I learned about those environments. Also, there was a separate area from all of the dioramas called the "Touch and Feel Room". In here you were able to pick up bones, watch turtles eating, see a live rain forest, and ask the worker in there many questions about what was in that room. I thought that room was the most fun and I would like to bring my son there to see everything.

I liked the Bell Museum. Again it was one of those little hidden places in the Twin Cities that I do not think many people realize is there. I will go back again.