OLogy Cards > Steve Quinn

Vanishing Habitats
To Steve Quinn, dioramas are inspiring windows into distant times and faraway places. They also serve to conserve the beautiful, fragile habitats they portray. Some of the first habitat dioramas were built at the Museum in the late 1800s when people were worried about vanishing wilderness and wildlife. Movies and television didn't exist back then, so Museum artists and scientists began using dioramas to bring awareness and appreciation for nature in order to protect wildlife.

In 1903, a pelican diorama at the Museum helped inspire President Teddy Roosevelt to dedicate that area in Florida as the first of 50 federal bird preserves. Steve's favorite diorama of Mountain Gorillas in the Akeley Hall of African Mammals helped bring about the first national park in Africa to save the gorillas. Yet Steve still wonders, "Will we treasure the planet as we do the dioramas, or will the dioramas one day become a record of a lost world, as it was before we destroy it?" Steve hopes the dioramas will help people understand the important role they play in protecting the environment.

Constructing Life-Like Models
When visitors enter the Akeley Hall of African Mammals, they are greeted by a herd of eight majestic African elephants. Did you know that they are all hollow inside?

Like all the models in the hall, the elephants were prepared using a method developed by the African explorer, taxidermist, and sculptor Carl Akeley.

This process begins by constructing a life-sized frame made of wire, wood, and often the bones of the actual animal. Then a clay sculpture is carefully crafted over the frame to show the muscular details of the animal in a life-like pose. Next, a plaster mold is made from the sculpture. From this mold, a hollow, lightweight paper mache cast is made. Finally, the hollow cast sculpture is covered with the animal's skin, which is glued to the manikin. Then details such as eyes, lips and nostrils are added.

With Akeley's method, the final models are extraordinarily life-like.