Dear Friends and colleagues,

I'm writing to inform you all of some disturbing plans that I have just learned about for the James Ford Bell Museum in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Many of you may know that the Bell Museum possesses what are, arguably, the most magnificent collection of natural history dioramas done by the great wildlife and bird artist, Francis Lee Jaques. Also represented in this priceless diorama collection, are the contributions of Louis Agassiz Fuertes, Robert Bruce Horsefall, Charles Abel Corwin, and pioneer diorama designer, famed Ornithologist and early conservation activist Frank Chapman.

Late in his career at AMNH, Jaques assisted in the design of the Bell Museum building to facilitate and assure its primary objective of optimum display for its dioramas and, through the 40s and into the 50s, designed, directed construction of, and painted the backgrounds for a series of dioramas that can be considered his best. I say this because Jaques was originally from Minnesota, grew up on its prairies, north woods boundary waters, and hunted waterfowl on its, then, vast and wild wetlands. As they all feature the places that Jaques knew and loved so well, they are infused with his passion and a vitality that is not as apparent (if that’s possible) in his other works. The scenes, actual sites which he and the Bell staff, visited in the wild and slavishly duplicated within the museum, today stand as records of environmental change as they can all be revisited to document habitat loss or preservation. These scenes of thousands of Snow Geese over wind swept marshes, Sandhill Cranes alighting on a spring prairie meadow, or majestic Moose in the northern lake country all evoke such a compelling illusion and sense of place and personal presence that one is struck by the ABSENCE of the cries of the birds or the chill of the north wind on one’s cheek when standing before them. They are masterworks of natural history diorama art!

Elk diorama by Jaques. Photo by Gary Hoyle

Sadly, I have learned last week that the Minnesota State Legislature has approved funds to build a new natural history museum on the University of Minnesota campus at Saint Paul and this new plan calls for gutting the interior of the Bell Museum in Minneapolis, an attempted removal of some of its unique collection of irreplaceable dioramas in order to “reinterpret” some in the new museum, and the possible storage or disposal of the rest.

WITH ALL MY HEART, I believe this plan, if acted out, is a grave mistake, and that history will look back on this action as a great and tragic loss - to science, art, and our understanding of ourselves as a species, and how we relate to the natural world around us.

Losing this unique building, as a site designed specifically for the display of natural history dioramas, is in itself a monumental loss. But then, to attempt to extract these great works from the alcove settings in which they were specifically designed and fabricated to be viewed in, is a folly and loss for the generations to come that will never see them under those intended conditions. Removed, "re-purposed", "re-interpreted", or "re-designed" to become "relevant" and "useful" to today's University of Minnesota, will inevitably mean that they will find themselves adapted as "open-air", "immersive", or "walkthrough" dioramas or placed in configurations that will, undoubtedly, allow for less than ideal viewing or proper lighting. Made to be movable or modular exhibits, they will become even more vulnerable to the whims of ambitious exhibit designers, short-sighted curators, and a nature-deprived public who, with a constant diet for the latest techno/interactive bombardment, cannot begin to understand their value historically, scientifically, or artistically as the remarkable replicas and record of a wilderness they can not comprehend, in this new setting.

We need to remind the Bell of its original mission in promoting the wilds of Minnesota through its display of its dioramas, its possession of a unique architectural setting designed for their display, as well as their possession of, not just any dioramas, but Jaques own dioramas. What they possess, surpasses anything they could possibly design by removing them from their unique building, created for their display, and then patching them back together and repurposing them to tell some forced University or contemporary research or environmental story that they were never intended to tell as part of their original created mission.

The Bell dioramas were never created to promote some limiting university goal, but a much more universal and meaningful mission to serve all of the people of Minnesota, and the WORLD. The Bell’s magnificent Snow Goose diorama, for example, is NOT and NEVER will be about the University of Minnesota or its research goals. It will ALWAYS be about opening museum visitor’s minds, eyes, and (most importantly) HEARTS to the majesty, wonder, and magnificence of Minnesota's waterfowl by THE VERY BEST diorama artist capable of pulling it off!!! There will NEVER, EVER be another Snow Goose diorama like that ever made again, because there is NO artist who will ever live again, who knew the birds, understood their behavior, and passionately loved Minnesota, like Francis Lee Jaques.

Snow Goose diorama by Jaques. Photo by Gary Hoyle

The James Ford Bell Museum is THE ONLY remaining building in NORTH AMERICA that was specifically designed, in its entirety, as a standing theater for natural history dioramas. Its very exterior structure; site plan and interior floor plan reflect this. It is superbly, and perfectly “fine-tuned” for this purpose. There are NO OTHER buildings like it in the US or Canada!!! As such, it is just as significant, both architecturally and artistically, as the Biological Museum of Gustaf Kolthoff and Bruno Liljefors in Stockholm, Sweden, and the grand Akeley Hall of African Mammals or the magnificent Hall of North American Mammals (also designed by Jaques) in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. All of these installations, the Bell among them, will stand through time as great scientific and artistic endeavors and achievements emblematic of a time of awakening to the needs for wildlife and wilderness conservation. Art historians will, inevitably, document these unique art forms as compelling, and masterful illusionistic renderings of nature, done with many of the same intentions, though more scientific in discipline, as the Hudson River School in rendering the “sublime” in the natural world around us. They were all created by the great naturalists/artists/ scientists and educators of their time, requiring extensive and costly travel and expeditions, unique and groundbreaking fabrication techniques, and embraced a mission to present an illusion of nature so powerful and compelling that, it can be argued, they will NEVER be equaled again. There will NEVER be another naturalist/artist and diorama designer like Francis Lee Jaques. These exhibits exist now, as do their real counterparts in the natural world, not to be partitioned, carved up, divided and made to perform, but stand as majestic marvels and portals to evoke a more humble and reverential view of the natural world that demands from each of us, acknowledgments of the profound and priceless value of wilderness and the value of the countless living things that thrive in it.

Just prior to my retirement from AMNH, there were serious design threats to the famed Hall of North American Mammals during its restoration and conservation. That period nearly pushed me to a nervous breakdown (no kidding!!! - and I've got the doctors bills to prove it!). The North American Mammal Hall, eventually, got to a good place, but not without battles and bloodshed over design along the way. We must stand up together and stop this from happening at the Bell, and, in so doing, send a clear message to the museum world regarding the value of all of the great diorama halls that remain untouched and intact.

We need to generate a TIDAL WAVE of support to stop this threat to the James Ford Bell Museum building as a landmark structure in the history of American environmental education and wildlife conservation and put an end to plans that would seek to cut up and remove its priceless permanent exhibit installations that were never fabricated of materials intended to be moved and repositioned or reconfigured. We need to make the scientific and art world know that the James Ford Bell Museum of Natural History stands, with its wonderful dioramas intact, as an irreplaceable treasure of art and science, not just for the people of Minnesota, but for us all. As time goes on, and these dioramas, inevitably, receive the recognition as the wonders of art and science that they truly are, I am certain this fact will grow in evidence, and those who fought to save the Bell will be hallowed as its wise stewards.

Ten years ago, I was asked to advise, as part of a team, on the possibility of moving these wonderful exhibits. We were told then that the plan was "absolute and firm", so I committed to offer whatever I could to assure that, if it did ever happen, it would happen in a way that assured the best possible results. But, honestly, I do NOT believe that is possible. I have personally worked on the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History for nearly 40 years. Many of these were executed by the famed Francis Lee Jaques and are the same vintage and, therefore, are made of the same materials as those at the Bell. They are all built to be PERMANENT installations and NOT intended to be moved. They are ALL designed and built, fabricated, painted and lit, within the theater-like viewing cases and exhibition halls in which they were PERMANENTLY installed. They are intended to be viewed under those specific and controlled surroundings. I can state, with COMPLETE confidence and without a doubt that, they CAN NOT be removed and relocated without gravely endangering or compromising them.