One of my favorite scenes in the Hall of North American Mammals in the
American Museum of Natural History is the diorama
of Alaskan brown bears There's two big, 600 pound bears there,
and over to the side, which you may not immediately notice,
is an otter,
and he's got a really
hard
look on his face, because he's just been
cheated out of his salmon by one of the bears. The story,
and the story line we tell in the label,
is that the otter had gone down into the river, got himself a salmon. Picked it up
on to the beach, you can see
the trail of water
where he did this
the bears came along,
scared the otter off,
he now has to just
stand to the side,
lick his lips while the bears eat what he took.
Okay, you ready George? I'm gonna pass them off to you.
Do you need one more piece? No I think we're okay.
Okay, so here it comes. Oh my god, it is so light. It must be balsa wood. It's got to be balsa wood.
Oh my goodness. Isn't it amazing?
Wow. It's got to be balsa wood.
This was not a cast off a specimen
It's just
a model. I think it's carved.
Do you know the species?
No, no I don't.
we should find out the species of salmon is on Kodiak that time of year. This is spring right?
Yeah, these bear are just coming out of hibernation.
When we opened the exhibit and George Dante and I examined this
model, we found that since the Hall was
built in the late '30s
and opened in 1942 it predated the use of materials like
fiberglass or polyester resins, which is the common material in the creation of
fish models today. It was actually a carved balsa wood model of a sockeye salmon and
it was spectacular. The fins are actually
brass sheeting
covered in beeswax,
and the fin rays and details are actually just carved into the beeswax.
The detail in the head and the eyes is actually carved in beeswax as well.
One of our editorial team found that it was carved and sculpted by George Browne
the son of the background painter, Belmore Browne.
Sadly, George Browne was killed
in a shooting accident
in his early twenties, and so this model is one of the few pieces of his artwork
that we have here at the Museum.
We called in our staff ichthyologist to review the model. As you can imagine the
references he used were not as good as those we have today,
there were some areas of the model that could be improved upon, but
did we really want to do that since it had such significance as a sculptural
piece, as a balsa wood carving?
So working with ichthyology and working with our conservation staff we
developed a method for
isolating the original model so that we did not harm the original painting
or of the original sculpting of the modeling in any way. With a layer,
an impervious layer, so that we know at some point in the future we could always
get back to the original George Browne surface, and then where required
George Dante,
our team taxidermist, painted over George's model to bring the specimen
up to being scientifically accurate, because we all agree that
the primary function of the diorama is to teach
good science. We're a science museum before we're an art museum but we really did
want to address the whole uniqueness of this balsa wood carving by George Browne.
Great, Excellent.
I think this is fabulous.
We'll continue.
I think it should have a big arrow pointing at it
so people stop looking at
the horrible murderous
bear
and concentrate on the real animal in the scene.
Do you think we should leave these white areas? Yeah, why not?
Okay George, we'll set it down.
Would you like it this way? Yeah.
It's such a big improvement, I think George and Belmore Browne would be very happy.