Miniature Worlds

The town library in Ness City, Kansas, was a small affair in the 1950s. I remember it in my grade school years as a stand-alone building that was standard storefront architecture of the times. The librarian was a polite and encouraging older woman. I don't remember much about the collection, but what fascinated me were the dioramas. A row of a half-dozen lighted boxes along one wall modeled scenes depicting the early days of the area, mostly illustrating native American activities and settlements. There also was one showing white settlers building a prairie frame house. I spent so much time studying them that I was warned to turn out the light switch in each.

Several decades later, in graduate school for theatre design, I was introduced to the Thorne Rooms. These are a kind of diorama plugged in, but people are mostly absent. There are 68 of them at the Art Institute of Chicago, exquisitely rendered in about 1" scale, often including lighting, depicting mostly opulent interiors of different periods and styles.

As a sometime model railroader, more interested in the art of the layout than the operation and equipment, I was fascinated by these rooms. As stage designer they became great research sources and I visited the Institute rooms several times, whenever I got to Chicago. In detail and finish they go far beyond what I produced for designs, but they always represented a far-off goal in presentational model art.

It's interesting to me to think about why these exist. For theatre purposes, the value is direct and clear. Something will be built to reflect that model, and other artists and performers create their work in harmony with it.

But the dioramas have another purpose. They reify in miniature something that may exist no longer in the modern world. They share an experience and understanding of a place and time in ways that closely resemble reality. As three-dimensional miniatures, they convey a sense of space and allow one to grasp the whole of the design in a state of perfection. So, it is not just the subject of the miniature, but also the nature of the miniature itself that can be appreciated.

None of my theatre models rose to this level of care and finish, though often the goal was there. The model is not the art, it's the idea of the art. But the process of model-making is important for making design judgements and explaining the design. I rarely finished my theatre models, once I had worked out design problems and they became sufficiently explanatory to directors and stage craftsmen.

I truly would like to return and visit those rooms again. Google them and you will be amazed. Certainly visit them if you get to Chicago.