Abstract:

This article explores the American Museum of Natural History's (AMNH) Florida Group display that opened in 1918 and provides insight into evolving US conceptions of Florida as a reptilian state on the eve of modernity. Scholars of the AMNH's historic animal dioramas—what one calls the museum's "windows on nature"—point to their importance within the institution's educational agenda. At a time when film and wildlife photography were fledgling technologies, these three-dimensional exhibits offered a form of "virtual reality," aided by the museum's claims to the authentic reproduction of nature. The Florida Reptile Group, however, has been overlooked by historians, despite being a major display for several decades; moreover, the diorama coincided with a period of rapid development in South Florida, a site of real estate, tourism, and population booms, including the reclamation of waterlogged environs that inspired the exhibit. Visitor perceptions of the display are unfortunately absent from the historical record, but we can glimpse the diorama for ourselves: photographs survive in the archive, allowing us to contemplate its physical representation but also interpretation of Florida. Building upon older ideas of the region as a primeval wetland, but crucially one being "conquered" by the inroads of drainage and development, the diorama highlights the fraught significance of reptiles and amphibians to how Florida has been popularly imagined, often in deeply ambivalent ways.

摘要：

本文探讨了美国自然历史博物馆 (AMNH) 于 1918 年开放的佛罗里达集团展览，并深入了解美国在现代性前夕将佛罗里达视为爬行动物国家的不断演变的观念。研究 AMNH 历史动物立体模型的学者——人们称之为博物馆的“自然之窗”——指出了它们在该机构教育议程中的重要性。在电影和野生动物摄影是新兴技术的时代，这些 3D 展览提供了一种“虚拟现实”形式，这得益于博物馆对真实再现自然的主张。然而，佛罗里达爬行动物小组一直被历史学家忽视，尽管几十年来一直是一个重要的展览。此外，西洋镜恰逢南佛罗里达州的快速发展时期，一个房地产、旅游业和人口繁荣的场所，包括激发展览灵感的淹水环境的开垦。不幸的是，历史记录中没有游客对展览的看法，但我们可以亲眼目睹立体模型：照片在档案中幸存下来，让我们能够思考它的物理表现，但也佛罗里达的解释。建立在该地区作为原始湿地的旧观念的基础上，但至关重要的是，一个被排水和发展的入侵“征服”的西洋镜突出了爬行动物和两栖动物对佛罗里达的普遍想象的重要意义，通常以非常矛盾的方式.