Old New York Diorama

Due to pressure by the staff of the American Museum of Natural History and the public, the Museum has begun to reconsider its history and to address instances of cultural and racial bias present in its exhibits. In a fundamental first step the museum provided annotation to the Old New York Diorama. The diorama depicts Pieter Stuyvesant meeting with native Lenape leaders in the Dutch colony of New Netherland including the city of New Amsterdam, present day Manhattan.

Exhibition department editors and designers worked with Bradley Pecore, a curatorial resident at the National Museum of the American Indian to develop a system for annotating the diorama. Annotation was applied directly to the front of the original diorama to provide context, amend cultural biases and reveal the hegemony which is present in many of our institutions.