Page 67 - Museums, Media and Cultural Theory In Cultural and Media Studies

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vision of nature, which was already popular, thanks to Paley’s Natural The-
ology mentioned earlier. Romantic associations of sublime and picturesque
scenery with religious feeling held great sway in the United States, where
the lack of architectural monuments was compensated for by a monumental
landscape. By the second half of the nineteenth century the North American
landscape was a source of nationalistic pride, seen as evidence of America
being blessed by God (Shaffer 2001: 364). In Sweden, natural history dioramas
similarly expressed a connection between wilderness and national identity, pro-
viding a vision of nature appropriate to the sense of nationhood and deeply
rooted in popular nineteenth-century concepts of natural history. The religious
character of natural history, which should perhaps have never survived
Darwinism, was given justification and permanent representation in the dio-
ramas. The dioramas attribute religious significance to scenes of nature through
the use of ‘natural symbolism’ derived from Romanticism. Romantic painting
attributed spiritual meaning to the landscape by deploying a symbolism so
broadly used that it appears to be natural (such as the association of light with
transcendence), or by drawing on the meanings that seemed to emanate directly
from the experience of nature (such as the feelings of anticipation and unrest
associated with a gathering storm) (Rosen and Zerner 1984: 57–8). In the
dioramas, the combination of Romantic symbolism and extreme illusionism
works to produce a sense that the cultural meanings attached to nature are
actually innate, and that these meanings are felt rather than read.
Romantic and panoramic painting also introduced visual devices which
invite the spectator to immerse themselves in the scene by an act of imagina-
tive identification. The most famous example of this is Caspar David
Friedrich’s painting Traveller above the Sea of Clouds (sometimes called The
Wanderer) of 1818, in which the central human figure has his back turned to
us, as he looks toward the landscape. In the Hall of North American
Mammals, at the AMNH, the jaguar and the mountain lion dioramas use a
similar technique. The animals look away from the viewer into the wilderness
beyond, which is lit by the setting sun. In both cases, these figures are like the
avatars in present day computer games – we imagine ourselves to be them, in
the landscape. While we are enticed into the illusion, we are kept from it by
the glass, effectively positioned outside nature, looking in. In the classic habi-
tat diorama, there are no signs of human presence, the landscape appears
untouched, unspoiled. Nature is thus presented as scenery, reachable only
through sight. Visual consumption replaces the bodily experience of being in
nature. Early visitors might have found that the dioramas both affirmed their
belief in the divinity of nature, and their understanding of natural scenery as a
feast for the eyes, and a trigger for fantasy and reverie. The dioramas position
the visitor as a solitary spectator who is privileged to examine in detail a scene