The fading of the specimens in the Hall of North American Mammals
was really quite severe.
They were no longer scientifically accurate,
and that was one of the main reasons why we wanted to go in
and carry out a renovation program.
We hoped that we'd be able to come up with a method
to recolor the faded taxidermy.
In the mid-to-late 1940s,
fluorescent lights became available.
and the artists seized on these immediately
because by mixing incandescent floods and spots--
those simulating directional sunlight and enhancing the warm colors of the spectrum--
with fluorescent lights-- fluorescent tubes to simulate
the cool light reflected by the blue sky--
you can get very real outdoor effects.
So the artist used those in the dioramas to simulate dawn or dusk
or the blasting mid-light of the open prairie.
What they did not realize was the damaging effects
that fluorescent lights have on specimens.
When we are looking for a colorant to apply to the specimens
in the Hall of North American Mammals,
We really focused on the bison diorama, kind of as our model diorama.
It had one of the highest light levels in the whole hall,
and has the most mounted specimens inside a diorama.
So we thought that any colorant used in there could be applied to
all of the other mammals in the hall that needed recoloring.
We had to have a colorant that could have minimal effect to the hairs.
And by that I mean they're not going to clump things together,
impede any brushing
or grooming that would have to happen in the future.
Ideally, we were looking for material that was
either reversible or retreatable,
so that in the future, if they wanted to renovate this hall again, it would be easy to
take off whatever we had applied and apply something maybe newer or better.
The research of our conservation staff was extensive.
We tried different pigments with different solvents
and finally arrived at a dye material, and we were able to recolor and restore the
natural color of the animal by using specimens
both from this museum and loaned to us by the Smithsonian.
Recoloring taxidermy has always been an issue.
It has always been invasive to the specimen,
the materials have always been permanent, or the process or materials used
have never been very naturalistic when completed.
So, without the help of the Conservation Department to come up with this material,
this would have not been possible.
It's interesting, the male in the back, when you look through, those are pretty good.
Yeah, they're kind of shadowed from the light.
We actually spent weeks trying to develop a way to blend the colors.
With dyes, it's much different than working with paints.
When mixing the colors, you didn't have an instant result. You couldn't tell exactly what
the colors were until you applied them on something.
I actually mixed a series of colors for each and every diorama, for each and every specimen,
to make sure that whatever we did was going to be completely convincing
and completely accurate. Then we started to test the colors inside the diorama,
to make sure that they looked the same at my studio
as they did inside the light of the diorama.
Once the recoloring started, everything ran pretty smooth.
I think these are very subtle effects.
It's not dramatic like it was with the pronghorns and the bison. You could certainly go darker with it.
This guy--looks like the same thing, right, that there was something and it got bleached?
It looks like there was something there, yeah.
I think I'd like it.
That's amazing.