The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) will develop, implement, and evaluate Hotspot California, a research-based natural science gallery transformation that will explore the educational potential of wildlife dioramas to engage the public in urgent environmental issues. The exhibition will showcase five real places in California that exemplify high biological diversity and complex environmental issues. Innovative approaches to interpretation will emphasize personal connections to these places and infuse static dioramas with visualization technologies that illustrate environmental change over time. The project will explore how such enhancements to dioramas might help visitors develop place-based connections to the natural world.
The project has four major deliverables: 1) an innovative 25,000 sq ft gallery exhibition installation featuring five specific California places where California's unique biodiversity is threatened; 2) an application and evaluation of a new participatory exhibit design model involving community contribution, collaboration, and co-design; 3) a two-day "synthesis symposium" for informal science education professionals to consider broad applications of project findings for the field; and 4) "Diorama Dilemmas: A Source book for Museums," synthesizing relevant literature, case studies, and findings from the project's research and evaluation generalizable to the field.
The Oakland Museum of California proposed to develop Hotspot California as a research-based natural sciences gallery transformation that would explore the educational potential of wildlife dioramas to engage the public in urgent environmental issues. The project planned to infuse static dioramas with emerging technologies and dynamic stories of real places to engage museum visitors deeply in the natural world and to affect positive attitudes and behavior toward conservation. The project was intended to lay the groundwork for new directions in the underlying philosophy and interactive potential of this type of exhibit. The final exhibition, Changing California, showcases a fresh approach to natural history through a reinstalled Gallery that presents seven places throughout California that depict the state’s diversity of climate, geology, habitats, ecosystems, and wildlife, while exploring current scientific research, contemporary issues of land use, environmental conflict, and conservation projects. The new gallery includes human history and impact, which is still unusual within a natural history context despite the overwhelming evidence of human impact on the natural world. At 25,000 square feet, the extensive gallery is the only presentation of its kind to showcase a collective portrait of California’s rich biodiversity alongside humans’ interaction with the natural world. Highlighting California as one of the top ten hotspots for biological diversity in the world, innovative displays present the fusion of meticulously created dioramas with citizen science projects, exhibit installations co-created with community organizations, and extensive opportunities for visitors to contribute their own thoughts and stories about California’s natural world. The primary strategies utilized in the new exhibition include: Adding interactive, inquiry-based elements that allow visitors to engage in meaningful ways with the content in the dioramas and at the same time appreciate the artistry embedded in them; Instilling a "sense of place" by rearranging the gallery from its former generalized layout to showcase seven real places in California that represent biodiversity hotspots; Using scientific and personal testimony from a diversity of scientists and residents who are passionate about their local place to inspire visitors to learn more about these places, visit them and get involved in protecting them; Exploring the selected specific places in the context of rapid change over time through a combination of simple interactive elements and scenario-modeling visualization technologies; Conducting empirical research on how people make meaning with dioramas in order to test our hypothesis that, in order for people to care about nature, visitors need to hear from people who live in and care about these places. In addition to the gallery installation, the gallery transformation offered a platform for community co-creation, collaboration and contribution with involvement of dozens of community members, conservationists, and scientists as well as historians, artists, and other creative leaders. The process was supported through research performed by Cecilia Garibay and Associates on the impact of dioramas on the creation of a "sense of place" in exhibits at OMCA as well as the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and The Field Museum. Garibay and Associates also compiled the first-ever literature synthesis on publications and documents related to diorama research and evaluation. Finally, the project culminated in a symposium, "Human Nature: Revisiting the Natural History Museum," with representatives of more than 20 science and nature museums and organizations from across the country and Canada. The field of natural history museums is grappling with the role of museums can and should play in one of the most pressing and dire issues of our time – climate change – and how to balance serving as a trusted resource while taking on an active position as actors and advocates for individual and collective change. Through this symposium, leaders from the participating museums came together to share thoughts on this "call to action," considering how natural history and science exhibits can now share space with human stories and explore evidence of the impact that people have, for better and worse, on our planet.
