Nature

Growing up in a northern Illinois city of nearly 150,000 people, I don’t recall seeing much wildlife when I was a child. It was a big deal to see a deer in a field as we drove the highway on a family vacation. That might be one reason why the natural history dioramas at the Field Museum made such an impression when I first saw them, on a grade school field trip to Chicago. As an adult, my fascination with the dioramas went beyond their beauty and artistry to consider some of the contradictions inherent in the dioramas and raise questions about our past, and contemporary, relationship to nature.