IMPRINT, the Bell Museum's quarterly magazine for members, offers stories of scientific adventure and discovery, insight into today's rapid environmental changes, updates on museum programs and exhibits, and fun activities for kids. IMPRINT is published quarterly and is available as a benefit of Bell Museum membership.

For more articles, see the Director's Column index

Dioramas Aside, There is No World Without Us
By Scott Lanyon
Fall 2007

I grew up spending a lot of time in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and that is where I came to appreciate habitat dioramas. Dioramas encourage you to use your imagination not only to bring the scene to life, but also to put yourself in that scene. For me, that frequently meant imagining that I was the first person to step foot in a particular place. This was possible because the dioramas, like most of those at the Bell Museum, contained no indication that humans were ever there. Indeed, most habitat dioramas seem to go out of their way to depict the natural world as if humans had never existed. In retrospect, I recognize that these diorama experiences encouraged me to develop an “idealized” picture of natural areas – a picture devoid of people (except, of course, myself and any friends that accompanied me).

The reality of course is that there is no place on earth that exists apart from humans. For those people with a Native American and/or rural upbringing, it probably seems ludicrous to think that an institution would need to explain to people that they are dependent on nature and that their actions have a profound impact on the natural world. But this is the reality in the 21st Century, when the vast majority of citizens live in or around cities and have only a vague idea about where their food and water comes from, much less a true sense of their profound dependence on the environment.

Natural History museums have always been a place where visitors can contemplate their relationship to nature, but the nature of that contemplation has to change to keep pace with society. Today’s Bell Museum is linked to new ways of seeking and sharing information on these critical issues, from the face-to-face conversations that occur at our Café Scientifique, to scientific discourse in vibrant online communities. As we go to press with Imprint, the museum is scheduled to host a group of top science bloggers and writers (from SEED magazine and its affiliates) in a live panel discussion titled “Speaking Science 2.0: New Directions in Science Communication.” Writers and bloggers are on the forefront of public engagement with science in an era when we get much our information from the Internet, magazines, and TV. Just as the Bell Museum brings the perspective of artists to bear on environmental questions through our magnificent exhibits, we’ve made a special effort this fall to bring science journalists to campus to share their insights.

Fresh from appearances on the Today Show, in Newsweek, and other media, author Alan Weisman is scheduled to visit the University of Minnesota Bookstores, in partnership with the Bell Museum, to speak about his recently published book The World Without Us. Weisman’s premise is a fascinating thought experiment that immediately called to my mind those depopulated museum dioramas. In the book, Weisman poses the question: What would happen to the Earth—and to the products of human society—if all humans simply vanished from the planet? The result is a thought-provoking read that skips around the globe to consider the legacy—and the fate—of our cities, nuclear plants, plastics, and other human inventions, and to infer how the rest of the world’s living creatures might flourish or flounder in our absence.

Programs like these, which connect our audiences to contemporary science journalists, are the latest in a long continuum of efforts to change the way people view the natural world and their impact and dependence upon it. As we develop new exhibits for the new Bell Museum facility, we’re even looping back for a fresh look at our much-loved dioramas, and as they’re re-installed, we’ll be working to bring these important concepts to the forefront. You won’t see mannequins in the moose habitat, but the new museum experience will make it clear that humans are, in fact, an integral part of the natural world.