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theses

Science/Fiction analyzes shifting American relationships to nature in the contemporary period by considering various incarnations of habitat dioramas, the American Museum of Natural History’s revolutionary display type that combines three-dimensional specimens with illusionistic backgrounds in niches behind glass. I examine how both the institution and fine artists have used this form to explore environmental issues since World War II by attending to materiality, histories of vision, and sociohistorical context. Through case studies on the Hall of North American Mammals, Robert Smithson, Mark Dion, and Alexis Rockman, I argue that the habitat diorama occupies a unique role in the American natural imaginary. It is a contested space used to build contradictory narratives about nature and its relationship to patriotic identity, institutional knowledge, and ecological politics.
Throughout the project, I focus on the use of glass to demonstrate the physical ways in which each maker constructs bodily relationships to the environment and how glass’ symbolic associations with competing concepts of vision frame these interactions. Chapter one argues that the diorama’s glass screen serves to unify distracted vision and promote disinterested, observational prowess as a patriotic responsibility. The following chapters then show how each artist changes the position of the glass screen to open the diorama and create new natural history narratives. In chapter two, Smithson’s mirror boxes challenge the museum’s definition of self-contained and enduring nature while the Cold War frayed the American relationship to the environment. In chapter three, Dion creates inclusive spaces, performing an institutional critique that decenters vision in favor of phenomenological encounters with nature that promote wonder. In chapter four, Rockman’s science fiction dioramas propose alternative universes marred by climate change, suggesting that vision may still mobilize productive action.
Ultimately, I trace a politicized conception of nature that simultaneously subverts and reifies institutional knowledge and the role of vision in constructing it. I establish that habitat dioramas and their reinterpretations reflect larger controversies about nature and vision throughout the twentieth century, considering not only the function of the display at the height of its popularity, but also the way it mediates American understanding of the natural world across time. Examining the habitat diorama as a discursive visual technology used across disciplines, I identify the broad significance of these objects to American art and show that these installations have served as vital tools in developing notions of self, science, and the environment.

ETD_9752

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-eq81-3z45

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.