Welcome to the Chicago Academy of Science’s virtual exhibit. The dioramas you’re about to see were created beginning in 1914, which makes them a lot older than most of what you’ll find on the Web, or even in many museums. These installations stood for 81 years inside the Academy’s Laflin building on Clark Street in Chicago, Illinois. Thousands of people visited them every year. One of the driving forces behind the dioramas as they look in this exhibit was Dr. Beecher, Academy director from 1958 through 1982. He updated and modernized many of the dioramas over the years.

But in 1995, when the Academy relocated, all the meticulously constructed vegetation, taxidermied animals and beautifully painted backdrops were removed. The collections were saved and some may be reinterpreted in a new setting in the Academy’s new building, but for now, the only place you can view these dioramas is here in cyberspace.

The dioramas display the natural landscapes of the Chicago region as they would have appeared around 1880. The first few loosely illustrate the theory of natural succession as it was developed by Dr. Henry Cowles in his work at the Indiana Dunes in the early part of this century. Some of the captions contain directions to sites in the Chicago area that are similar to the ones represented in the dioramas. The natural landscapes of the region are part of the 200,000-acre Chicago Wilderness, a concentration of globally important natural communities.

Due to the fact that the original Dioramas were life size, and now we have had to make them fit on a computer screen, some detail has been lost. We hope to make up for some of that by providing links from the pictures and captions to some close up information when we can.

Unlike the original dioramas, which were fairly much "set in stone", this virtual exhibit is also a "work in progress" for from time-to-time we will update some of the text and add new close up pictures, so check back now and then, you may just discover something new. If you visited the museum and saw the physical dioramas feel free to use our fill-in-form on our main web page to submit your memories of them. We always like to get comments on our work here on the web, and at the museum.

Thanks to Jill Riddell, for translating the old diorama copy in to meaningful captions for the web. To Ron Vasille, our Museum Collections Manager, for research, and preserving the physical components of the Dioramas. To Kara Tourville and the Virtual Exhibit Crew who met and planned and tweeked things. And to Christopher Dunn, who hacked away at the computer to put this all together, because it was his idea anyway....

And now, to start your tour of the Virtual Exhibit Dioramas, CLICK HERE...

All photos and text are copyright 1996, 1997by the Chicago Academy of Sciences. All Rights Reserved.
V1.0 12/12/1996 CMD
V1.1 1/15/1997 CMD

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