Each of the Museum’s dioramas depict a real location at a particular time of day. Painters like James Perry Wilson, a self-taught landscape painter who worked at the Museum from 1943 to 1957, referred to photographs and plein air paintings to recreate the scenes for the Hall of North American Mammals’ dioramas. An architect by training, Wilson perfected a grid system to compensate for distortions caused by the curved shape of the diorama’s wall.
Click the image to watch archival footage of Wilson painting the backgrounds of select dioramas.
