During his first expedition to Africa for the Field Museum, in 1896, Carl Akeley, who would later be recognized as the father of modern taxidermy, collected the skins of more than 500 animals including a lion; impressed a sultan with his taxidermy skill; nearly died of dehydration in the Somali desert until a passing caravan revived him with a skin of rancid goat’s milk; and strangled a leopard with his bare hands after the cat pounced, knocked his gun from his hands, and grabbed his arm with its teeth. In short, Carl Akeley was a badass.
She acknowledges that dioramas are a bit out of fashion, relics of an age before interactive exhibits (and nature documentaries), when looking at dioramas of immobile stuffed animals amid reconstructed scenes of their natural habitats was the closest most people were ever going to get to experiencing these animals in the wild. Akeley was particularly interested in preserving animals that, like striped hyenas, were in danger of extinction. (The impetus for the 1896 expedition was the rinderpest virus, brought to what is now Ethiopia by horses accompanying invading Italian soldiers, which had wiped out 95 percent of the hooved animals in northeastern Africa, the hyenas’ main source of food.) He also happened to be a master of his craft.
Akeley was equally meticulous with the backdrops and landforms in the dioramas. His first wife and assistant, Delia, sculpted thousands of leaves and plants by hand from hot wax and then painted them. “Can you imagine doing that?” Graslie marvels. “That kind of craft and dedication to education?”
Dioramas, especially dioramas that are meant to last for a long time, do not come cheap. Seventy percent of the Indiegogo campaign’s $170,000 budget will go toward construction of the diorama and restoring the stuffed hyenas (in general, they’re in good condition, Graslie says, but they’re starting to show their age around the ears); the rest will pay for Indiegogo fees, advertising, donation reward perks, and museum operations.
Through Wed 5/6indiegogo.com
