As natural looking as nature itself: an iconic museum restores its famous Hall of North American Mammals.

• Author: Barlow, Whitney
• Position: Museums Today - Column

MORE THAN 270,000,000 tourisis travel to U.S. national parks each year in search of beautiful landscapes and majestic animals, but it is the visitors to the American Museum of Natural History who often see the best views. In the Hall of North American Mammals, for instance, but for a mere glass wall, they come nose to nose with a mountain lion lounging in the Grand Canyon, a grizzly grubbing with her cubs in Yellowstone, and a coyote howling in Yosemite National Park.

For 70 years, museumgoers have been trans ported to such vivid scenes within the Hall's 41 detailed habitat dioramas, unique records of the continent's biodiversity and spurs to the conservation of its wildlife. Since spring 2011, exhibition specialists and conservators carefully have been restoring these treasures for generations to come.

"Dioramas may seem old-fashioned at first to some, but they are more like the real world than anything you'll see on a screen, even in 3D," says curator Ross MacPhee, a museum mammalogist who, together with Roland Kays of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, is overseeing the updating of interpretive panel texts, visitor guides, and educational materials based on the latest scientific research.

With backgrounds by some of the finest landscape painters of their time, the dioramas also are an unparalleled example of art in the service of science. Each tableau presents a snapshot of animals in a real location at a particular time of day or night, based on field observations by scientists, photographs, and on-site artists' sketches.

The current project, which culminates in the Hall's grand reopening this fall, similarly has required a high level of precision from the museum's conservation and exhibition teams. The bison, bears, coyotes, pronghorn, and elk, whose coats have faded over the years, meticulously are being retouched by hand and returned to their original hues. Lighting has been updated throughout to be more energy-efficient and less harsh. Landscape elements are being refreshed, from spooning on drifts of "snow" to cultivating real grasses to replenish thinned-out patches and plucking out wayward pine needles, one by one.

A close look at one of the dioramas illustrates the science and craft that goes into the creation and restoration of this iconic Hall. The wolf diorama is set on the southern shore of Gunflint Lake in northern Minnesota, in the middle of a frigid December night. For the best view, stand three feet away, in...