Overview

A historic first and a celebrated highlight of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, the massive Panorama created by KU professor Lewis Lindsay Dyche, originally depicted groups of North American mammals in their native surroundings. Now exhibited in the KU Natural History Museum, the Panorama shows a 360-degree-view of species situated among various landscapes, such as the Rocky Mountains & the Midwestern plains. We now have the opportunity to look at Dyche’s creation again, not simply as a didactic tool, but as an intriguing artifact with a cultural life worthy of attention. In order to do so our project focuses on the photographs that document the Panorama’s historic past. The digital platform Omeka was used to build an online archive, bringing together humanist commentary with digitized archival images of the world-renowned natural history diorama.

Presentations

Back, Andrea Walden. (2020, July 30). Nature on Display: A digital Exploration of Lewis Lindsay Dyche’s Panorama. Arts Libraries Society of North America, Virtual. https://www.arlisna.org/news/conferences/1005-2020-48th-annual-conference