CHAPTER XV ROOSEVELT AFRICAN HALL—A RECORD FOR THE FUTURE
I have dreamt many dreams. Some of them have been forgotten. Others have taken concrete shape and become pleasing or hateful to me in varying degree. But one especially has dwelt with me through the years, gradually shaping itself into a commanding plan. It has become the inspiration and the unifying purpose of my work; all my efforts during recent years have bent toward the accomplishment of this single objective—the creation of a great African Hall which shall be called Roosevelt African Hall.
I have always been convinced that the new methods of taxidermy are not being used to the full; that, although the taxidermic process has been raised to an artistic plane, a great opportunity still remains for its more significant and comprehensive use in the creation of a great masterpiece of museum exhibition. Then, too, I have been constantly aware of the rapid and disconcerting disappearance of African wild life. And I suppose that those two considerations gave rise to the vision of the culmination of my work in a great museum exhibit, artistically conceived, which should perpetuate the animal life, the native customs, and the scenic beauties of Africa.
When I returned to America in 1911, my mind saturated with the beauty and the wonder of the continent I had left, I was dreaming of African Hall. One year later my ideas were sufficiently defined to be laid before Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, President of the American Museum of Natural History, who approved my plans and asked that they be presented to the Trustees of the Museum. The plan that I proposed to the Trustees provided for a great hall devoted entirely to Africa, which should put in permanent and artistic form a satisfying record of fast-disappearing fauna and give a comprehensive view of the topography of the continent by means of a series of groups constructed in the best museum technique. Neither in this nor in any other country has such an exhibit been attempted. Not only would the proposed hall preserve a unique record of African wild life, but it would also establish a standard for museum exhibition in the future.
The Trustees approved my plan for immediate execution; the undertaking was to go forward as rapidly as funds were available. One of the old North American mammal halls, rechristened the "elephant studio," because there the mounting of the elephant group was already under way, was retained for my use and there, to crystallize my conception, I made a model of the African Hall. This model represents a great unobstructed hall, in the centre of which stands a statuesque group of four African elephants with a group of rhinos at either end. Both on the ground floor and in the gallery, with windows seeming to open upon them, are arranged habitat groups of the African fauna with typical accessories and panoramic backgrounds. The long and arduous task of mounting the central elephant group, the first unit for the exhibit which the model sketched in miniature, was interrupted by the war.
Many of the undertakings that were making long strides toward completion in 1914, to-day stand arrested due to conditions following the war. Only one by one can they fall back to their natural places in the march of progress, and the most urgent must be given place first. African Hall is one of those projects which cannot be delayed. Now or never must it become a reality. Twenty-five years ago, with innumerable specimens at hand, its development would have been an impossibility. Even if a man had had all the animals he wanted from Africa, he could not have made an exhibit of them that would have been either scientific, natural, artistic, or satisfying, for twenty-five years ago the art of taxidermy and of museum exposition of animal life hardly existed. Likewise, in those days much of the information that we had about animals through the tales of explorers, collectors, and other would-be heroes was ninety-five per cent. inaccurate.
Twenty-five years hence the development of such a hall will be equally impossible for the African animals are so rapidly becoming extinct that the proper specimens will not then be available. Even to-day the heads that are reaching London from British East Africa are not up to the old standards. If an African Hall is to be done at all, it must be done now. And even if it is done now, we must have men to do it who have known Africa for at least a quarter of a century. Africa to-day is a modern Africa, the Africa of the Age of Man. Africa then was still the Africa of the Age of Mammals, a country sufficiently untouched by civilization to give a vivid impression of Africa a hundred years ago. By the time the groups are in place in African Hall, some of the species represented will have disappeared. Naturalists and scientists two hundred years from now will find there the only existent record of some of the animals which to-day we are able to photograph and to study in the forest environment. African Hall will tell the story of jungle peace, a story that is sincere and faithful to the African beasts as I have known them, and it will, I hope, tell that story so convincingly that the traditions of jungle horrors and impenetrable forests may be obliterated.
With all haste, when the war was over, I turned again to African Hall—to Roosevelt African Hall, for naturally after the death of that great American who so deeply desired to bring to the world a knowledge of beautiful Africa and who had himself shot the old cow for the elephant group, we gave the proposed hall his name. The thought that my greatest undertaking was to stand as a memorial to Theodore Roosevelt doubled my incentive. I am giving the best there is in me to make Roosevelt African Hall worthy of the name it bears.
Plan of the main floor and gallery of Roosevelt African Hall
The structure itself will be of imposing dimensions. A spacious open hall will occupy the central portion of the building. As I have planned it, the floor measurement of this great open space is sixty by one hundred and fifty-two feet; the height to the gallery at the sides is seventeen feet and that over the centre to the ceiling, thirty feet. Its floor space will be encroached upon only at the corners by the elevators; that is, the actual open floor space without columns or any obstruction whatever will be sixty by one hundred and sixteen feet. In the centre of this large hall will stand the group of four African elephants treated in statuesque fashion, mounted on a four-foot base with no covering of glass. At one end of the elephants, the group of black rhinoceros will be placed; at the other end, the white rhinoceros. As a result of late developments in the technique of taxidermy, we are able to treat these pachyderms so that they will not suffer because of lack of protection under glass. Changing atmospheric conditions will have no effect upon them and they can receive essentially the care given to bronzes.
Since the elephant is the largest land mammal in the world to-day and one of the most splendid of all animals of the past or present, and especially since it is typical of Africa, it is fitting that the elephant should dominate this hall. Except for bronzes at either end facing the main entrances, there will be nothing in the central open space to detract from the majesty of the elephants and the lumbering bulk of the rhinos. Visitors, pausing to study the elephants, may look out on either side as though through open windows into an African out-of-doors, for the other great animals of the continent in their natural environment of forest, plain, river, or mountain, will surround the central hall. The position of these habitat groups in a kind of annex has a double advantage: it permits them to be carefully protected against atmospheric conditions and prevents any infringement upon the measurements of the hall proper. There will be forty of these realistic groups—twenty viewed from the main floor and twenty more, similarly executed, but displaying the smaller animals, viewed from the gallery.
The forty canvases used as backgrounds will be painted by the best artists available. Each will be an accurate portrayal of a definite type of African scenery, usually showing some feature of importance—Mt. Kenia on the equator, the waterless plains of Somaliland, or the gorilla forests of the Kivu country. Together they will give a comprehensive idea of the geographical aspect of Africa from the Mediterranean on the north to Table Mountain at Cape Town, and from the east coast to the west coast.
The mounted specimens in the foreground will combine to represent in the most comprehensive way the animal life of the continent. These groups will be composite—that is, as many species will be associated in each of them as is consistent with scientific fact. For example, one of the large corner groups will represent a scene on the equatorial river Tana, showing perhaps all told a dozen species in their natural surroundings with stories of the animals and a correct representation of the flora. In the foreground on a sandbar in the river will be a group of hippos; across the stream and merging into the painted background, a group of impalla come down to water; in the trees and on the sandbars of the farther bank two species of monkeys common to the region; a crocodile and turtles basking in the sun near the hippos, and a few characteristic birds in the trees.
Another of these large corner groups will be a scene of the plains, a rock kopje with characteristic animals such as the klipspringer, hyrax, Chanler's reedbuck, and baboons on the rocks, the background leading off across the plain showing a herd of plains animals—and the adjoining group continuing the story by showing more of the species of the plains. The third of the large corner groups will represent a Congo forest scene with the okapi and chimpanzee perhaps, and such animals as may be associated legitimately with the okapi. The fourth group will be a desert scene, a water hole with a giraffe drinking and other animals standing by, awaiting their turn.
In these four corner groups we can present the four important physical features of African game country, and they can be supplemented, of course, by the scenes in the thirty-six other groups. The large groups, however, give opportunity for particularly striking scenic effects.
A Section of the "Annex" Containing the Habitat Groups
(A) Floor of group space, sunk four feet below the level of hall floor to permit of various elevations of foregroup in group. (B) Floor of gallery group case. (E) Glass roof of gallery group case. (F) Glass roof of main floor group case.
(G) Glass in front of gallery case set at angle to cut reflections. (H) Glass in main floor case. (I) Space occupied by bronze panels. (J) Space above gallery groups for artificial lighting purposes. (L) Plane of painted background.
Lack of care in museum exhibition has come about in part at least because of the lack of permanence in the specimens exhibited. Now that we have reached a point in the development of taxidermy technique where we can say without reservation that our preparations are permanent, permanent to a degree only dreamed of within the last twenty years, we feel justified in taking extreme measures to insure the future care and preservation of these preparations. The elephants and rhinos can be made as permanent as bronze for endurance under all conditions, but the other animal groups with their backgrounds and with accessories necessarily made largely of wax cannot be thus exposed. That they shall not suffer from excessive light and from changing atmospheric conditions, they will be placed in two great alleyways on either side of, but practically outside, the hall, hermetically sealed off from the hall proper and also from the outside atmosphere. Thus each group will be absolutely protected from changes in temperature and humidity. Each group will be in fact within an individual compartment, and allowed to "breathe" only the air of the alleyway, which is filtered and dried and kept at a uniform temperature throughout the year. Artificial light will be used for these groups.
The amount of light required on them will be relatively small because of the fact that they are to be viewed from a relatively dark central hall. We shall be looking from the hall into the source of light rather than from the source of light outward. Also, reflections can be reduced to a minimum and practically eliminated, owing to the fact that the groups are the source of illumination, by having the glass in the front of the case inclined at such an angle that it reflects only the dark floor.
In addition to the forty groups, twenty-four bas-relief panels in bronze (six by eleven feet each) are planned as a frieze just above the floor groups and along the balcony to form a series around the entire lower floor, becoming a part of the architectural decoration of the hall. The sculpture of each panel will tell the story of some native tribe and its relations to the animal life of Africa.
For instance, one panel will show a Dorobo family, the man skinning a dead antelope brought in from the forest to his hut, where are his wife and babies and two hunting dogs, their only domestic animals. A further interest in animal life will be revealed in the presence of the dead antelope as it is a source of food and clothing, for these people live entirely by hunting. Another panel may show a group in Somaliland with camels, sheep, goats, cattle, and ponies at a water hole, domestic beasts furnishing the interest in animal life. Still another panel completing the Somali story will represent a group of Midgans in some characteristic hunting scene. While each of these panels should be a careful and scientifically accurate study of the people and their customs, accurate in detail as to clothing, ornaments, and weapons, the theme running through the whole series should be the relationship of the people to animal life.
If an exhibition hall is to approach the ideal, its plan must be that of a master mind, while in actuality it is the product of the correlation of many minds and hands. In all the museums of the world to-day there are few halls that reveal a mastering idea and an interdependence of arts and crafts. Administrations change. One man's aim is replaced by an aim entirely different when another undertakes his work. The institution's inheritance of exhibits must usually be housed along with the new. Recently acquired specimens, satisfactorily mounted, are crowded in inadequate space and completely subordinate those specimens which, although they are of equal importance for the understanding of the spectator, give no illusion of life and have no appeal. Even when the architectural arrangement is good and the taxidermy acceptable, a heterogenous collection of exhibition cases or an inadequate lighting system may mar the harmony of the whole. Thus, there are plentiful opportunities in the meandering process, of which an exhibition hall is frequently the result, for the original plan to become fogged.
But no such conditions shall spoil the symmetry of Roosevelt African Hall. Every animal killed has been carefully selected with this great exhibit in mind. Each group mounted is being constructed as an integral part of the whole. A building has been especially designed to give the exhibit the most effective and appropriate setting. And the future is being insured by the training of men who shall carry forward the technique so far developed. Each man is carefully chosen. Each must have energy, common sense, a special ability, and a great love for the duties at hand. And although each may be a specialist in his own line, all are forming the habit of working together as day by day they assemble the carefully tanned skins, the clean, well-shaped manikins, the silk and wax leaves and grasses, and the painted canvases for the backgrounds. For the first time we have the opportunity to train a group of men not only to practise the various arts which are combined in making modern zoölogical exhibits, but also to further develop the methods that make this sort of museum exhibition worth while from the scientific and artistic standpoint. In this considerable corps of men I am resting my hope that the technique of my studio shall be carried on to higher perfection instead of scattering or being carried underground when my part shall be done. This is important not only for Africa, but for all other continents as well, inasmuch as we are making records of rapidly disappearing animal life. From my point of view, this school of workers is perhaps the most important of all the results of the work on Roosevelt African Hall.
Every group in Roosevelt African Hall must be made by the men who make the studies in Africa so that the selection of environment, the background, and the story to be told shall be typical and so that every detail of accessory or background shall be scientifically accurate. It was formerly the custom, and is still in many museums, to send hunters into the field to kill animals and to send the skins back to the museum where a taxidermist mounts them. The taxidermist does not know the animals. He has no proper measurements for them. Usually the hunter does not supply them and, even if he does, they are of little value; for one man's measurements are not often reliable guides for another man to work by. In making a group as it really should be done, we cannot rely on one man out in the field to shoot and another back at the museum to mount. The men who study the animal and who shoot him must come back and mount him, and the men who make the accessories and who paint the background must go and make their studies on the spot. When all this is done the cost of the skins, instead of being half the expense of a group, is not five per cent.
I shall make the gorilla group, on which I am now at work, a real example of the proper method. A gorilla group undertaken three years ago in the average museum would have been done in the following manner. Skins would have been purchased from hunters in Africa. The men who were going to mount them would have studied the available writings on gorillas. They would have found out that the gorilla was a ferocious animal who inhabited the dense forests and, like as not, that he lived in trees most of the time. And that is the kind of animal the group would have shown.
Not satisfied with such a method, I went to Africa to get acquainted with the gorilla in his home. I found him in a country of marvellous beauty, spending much of his time in the open forests or in the sunshine of the hillsides. I found, too, that he was neither ferocious nor in the habit of living in trees. He can climb a tree just as a man can climb a tree, but a group of human beings up a tree would be as natural as a gorilla group in the same position.
The setting of the group of five gorillas is to be an exact reproduction of the spot where the big male of Karisimbi died. In mounting them I have my personal observation, my data and material to work from. My own measurements are significant and helpful. I have photographs of the scenery, the setting, and the gorillas themselves. I have photographs of their faces—not distorted to make them hideous but as they naturally were—and death masks which make a record that enables me to make the face of each gorilla mounted a portrait of an individual. All this makes these unlike any other mounted gorillas in the world. After all the work that I had put on them I was glad to get the corroboration of one who knows gorillas as well as T. Alexander Barnes. He had followed gorillas in the Kivu country where I got my specimens. As he looked at the first of the group standing in my studio, he exclaimed, "Well, thank God! At last one has been mounted that looks like a gorilla."
Still with all our work we are only well started on the gorilla group. The background—and it is a beautiful scene—must be painted by as great an artist as we can get and he must go to Karisimbi to make his studies. And the preparators who make the accessories—the artificial leaves, trees, and grasses—they, too, must go to examine the spot and collect their data, for every leaf and every tree and every blade of grass must be a true and faithful copy of nature. Otherwise, the exhibit is a lie and it would be nothing short of a crime to place it in one of the leading educational institutions of the country.
But, someone will say, this is all in the future. What has already been accomplished? What definitely is the status of Roosevelt African Hall?
Well, I am mounting animals. The elephant group, the white rhinoceroses, and one of the okapi are completed and are now on exhibition. Work on the gorilla group is advancing rapidly. There are already collected and awaiting their turn to be mounted materials for a black rhino group and a lion group. I have estimated that it will require at least ten years and the expenditure of one million dollars to complete the work. And there is good reason to hope that the money needed will be provided. President Henry Fairfield Osborn in his Annual Report of the American Museum of Natural History for 1922 has called for a gift or a special endowment of one million dollars to finance and develop Roosevelt African Hall in addition to other funds now available, stressing this as the most pressing need of the Museum in the year 1923. The income from such a special endowment will enable us to complete the African Hall during the next decade and leave a million dollars of the new special endowment for the development of the new building to house the hall.
I am hopeful, too, that the Roosevelt Memorial Hall, out of which Roosevelt African Hall will open, is about to become a reality. The New York State Legislature will soon have before it a bill to appropriate two and one half million dollars for a memorial to New York's great citizen. Such a building is one of two plans for this memorial now under consideration by the State Roosevelt Memorial Commission and there is much reason to hope that it may be favourably received by the people of the state.
I ought not properly to be writing autobiographical matter. That is usually a sign that a man is through and the truth is that I am just ready to begin my work. So far I have been studying my profession. Now I am prepared to practise it on one great example and in so doing to train men to continue my work so that the museums of this country can portray whatever of animal life they desire in a way that will have the greatest attraction and instruction for the public, both lay and scientific. It is chiefly in the hope of furthering that great project which must be undertaken now—a project to put into permanent and artistic form a complete record of the fast-disappearing animal life of the last stronghold of the Age of Mammals—that I write these things. Enough has been said to indicate that this is not one man's task. It may not even be accomplished by several men in the span of one man's life. But the future will show concrete results, for the slowest and most laborious stages of preparation are now in the past. Years of experimentation have perfected taxidermy, years of observation in the field have made a true conception possible, the American Museum of Natural History has committed itself to the plan—in a word, I am about to realize my dream.