Faux Real #1
Victoria, British Columbia
2016
The Royal British Columbia Museum has some of the most impressive and realistic life-size diorama displays I think I’ve ever seen. They are especially effective because they are quite wide and deep and are not behind glass. They made me wonder what the heck we were doing spending all our time in the city instead of being out it the woods somewhere on Vancouver Island seeing this stuff for real. (Although if I was in the woods, I would not want this close an encounter with a grizzly bear; so the display had a nice safety factor going for it.) The displays motivated us to take a bus to the edge of town the next day for a hike in a woodland park, sans bears.
In theory, I don’t like the idea of wild animals being killed just to create displays in museums (or captured for a life in a zoo), even if there is a strong educational purpose behind it. In practice though, I must confess I enjoy fine displays like this–even though some guilt due to the dissonant feelings always seems to creep in.