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What does Sean Murtha do at the American Museum of
NaturalHistory? Sean Murtha is an artist in the Museum’s
Exhibitions department. He mainlypaints backgrounds for
dioramas.
What’s Sean’s take on painting dioramas? > did anyone in
particular have an early influence on you?The bird painter Francis
Lee Jaques. When I was a teenager, I found a book Ireally liked
called 20th Century Wildlife Artists. It mentioned several
differentartists, one of whom was Jaques. What really struck me was
that it men-tioned that Jaques had worked on background paintings
at the AmericanMuseum of Natural History. This was the first time I
was able to put a nameto one of the background painters.
> how did that change your feelings about the dioramas?It
made me realize that actual humans had worked on them. Before that,
I’dthought the dioramas were just perfect. I didn’t even think
about what it tookto make them until I realized that there were
names involved, that peoplehad done them. Then I was able to pick
out which ones at the museum wereby Jaques or by other artists, and
to see different hands at work, even thoughI didn’t yet have names
for the other artists.
interview with an artistLet’s Talk With Sean Murtha About
Dioramas
copyright 2003
milstein hall of ocean life
roderick mickens / amnh
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field of study Art
hometown Port Jefferson Station, Long Island
favorite middle/ “Science and art were my favorites, of
course.”high school subjects
least favorite middle/ “Math was my worst subject, and I’m
finding out that in this field high school subjects math is very
important.”
Interests in middle school “I’ve been drawing as long as I know.
My dad would bring home reamsof computer paper, and I would fill it
all up.”
thoughts on high school “I went to high school in Port Jefferson
Station, Long Island. I wasknown as the guy who drew dinosaurs.
Everybody thought I would windup here, but as a scientist.”
thoughts on art school “I went to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn,
and I didn’t fit in there very well,mostly because I was stubborn,
mostly because I thought I was on theright track—and I was. But it
wasn’t a track that went over well in apost-modern environment. I
didn’t feel the need to experiment, or totry out more modern
techniques. I’m not sure if that’s the way to go toart school,
because I think I missed out on a lot.”
major influences “My high school art teacher, Eleanor Meier,
definitely set me on thepath. I was just a kid who drew; art didn’t
seem to me like somethingpeople could do for a living. She said,
‘You’ve definitely got to go to artschool. You’ve got to use it,
and there are jobs for artists.’”
recent work “We’ve been working on the renovation of the new
Milstein Family Hallof Ocean Life for close to three years. There
are 12 dioramas, and ninewere largely redone. I did all the
background paintings on those nine.”
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m o r e o n s e a n m u r t h a
INTERVIEW withan artist Let’s Talk With Sean Murtha About
Dioramas
milstein hall of ocean life
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INTERVIEW withan artist Let’s Talk With Sean Murtha About
Dioramas
amnh: Do you remember your first trip tothe American Museum of
Natural History?
sean: There were many trips, and I’m notsure I remember the
first one. But I doremember what stood out in the beginning:the
blowup of the forest floor, with the giantinsects. It’s still on
display. I think almost allkids fantasize about being small, and
seeingsmall things as huge creatures. It was fantas-tic, and
slightly frightening. And of course Iremember the dinosaur fossils.
I alwaysloved the dioramas, but it wasn’t until I wasa little older
that I began to understand whatthey were and appreciate them.
amnh: So when did nature occur to you as asubject for an
artist?
sean: I would say in about fifth or sixthgrade, when I was 10 or
12 years old. I wasvery well known for drawing dinosaurs inmy
school kids loved that stuff and I wasreally getting serious about
it. But I realized Icouldn’t draw real dinosaurs, and in order
tohave something to go by, I’d visit the back-yard of a friend of
mine who kept chickens.I’d watch their feet and the way they
movedand I’d draw them, which led to me fallingfor birds in
themselves. I never really gotinto birding, in the strict sense of
going outof my way to find rare birds and make lists,but it did
lead me to explore local placeswhere you find birds, like the
wide-openbays and salt marshes of Long Island’s NorthShore. And
going to those places inspired meto paint them.
amnh: Did Jaques’ work or that of othernature painters influence
your approach topainting dioramas?
sean: Definitely Jaques. Later the name ofJames Perry Wilson
came up. As a youngperson I thought Wilson’s dioramas
weredefinitely the best in the museum, and I stilldo, because
they’re just so true to life.There’s a lot of thinking in his
painting butnot a lot of expression, and everything is justright.
His paintings have no flaws, really. Sohe became my favorite
painter. I was alsoinfluenced by the more impressionistic styleof
Fred Scherer, who, though long retiredfrom the museum, I have been
lucky enoughto meet and learn from in person.
amnh: Tell me a little about the techniqueand skills a diorama
painter needs. Whatdoes the process of painting a diorama
back-ground consist of?
sean: A lot has to do with the large size,although painting
large just means mixingmore paint and using larger brushes
andmoving more you can’t sit at the easel. Thereal trick and this
is something I learnedwhen I began to work here is the fact thatthe
wall is a curve, not only from side to sidebut also from floor to
ceiling. It’s a half-dome. This means that if you’re painting a
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INTERVIEW withan artist Let’s Talk With Sean Murtha About
Dioramas
straight line, or something that’s supposed tolook like a
straight line, like the trunk of atree that’s standing up, it isn’t
really astraight line. You have to distort it in orderfor it to
look right. If it’s lying on the ground,like a fallen tree, it’s
even worse. You reallyhave to bend things in a way that isn’t
natu-ral, that isn’t the way you’d paint it on a flatsurface. There
are no courses to teach youthis, and it took me a while. I had to
cross abit of a gap, but I managed to find peoplehere who knew the
old artists, or who knewold guys who knew the old guys.
amnh: What materials do you use?
sean: The materials are the same as thoseused in traditional
painting. It’s canvas, justmounted on a plaster wall. I tend
towardslarger brushes, but I still do the same thingsI would do for
a smaller painting. One thingthat’s different is that with the kind
of paint-ing that hangs on the wall, modern tastegoes towards a
texture that’s somewhatloose, and brushwork that shows the hand
ofthe artist. But with a background painting,you don’t want to draw
the eye to the surface.You use a big bristle brush that looks like
alarge toothbrush, and you bang it on the wallrather than brushing
it across. That createsalmost a miniature stucco effect and
takesout the brushwork. It gives everything aneven texture that
doesn’t create any kind ofglare or shine. It doesn’t give away the
factthat there’s a wall there, and your eye isfooled into thinking
that the space just goeson.
amnh: How do you integrate the backgroundwith what’s happening
in the foreground?
sean: In the background painting, you beginwith the sky and work
your way down.Usually you start without any foregroundbecause you
need room for ladders andthings. When you get to the point where
thetwo meet, you stop, and someone else comesin and builds the
foreground. Often, at thatpoint, I’ll have them come in and put
downabout a foot of finished foreground at theback edge near the
painting, some sand orgrass, and then I’ll continue painting the
lastfoot or so, down to that, to match the colors.
amnh: Ideally, what effect should a dioramabackground painting
have on the viewer?
sean: The objective, believe it or not, is tomake you forget
that you’re seeing a paint-ing. You’re there to see the specimen,
themounted animal, and the painting is justthere to let you know
that it lives in the for-est or on cliffs or whatever. The
backgroundpainting is not supposed to draw too muchattention. I
can’t say to put as little of yourselfin it as possible, because
everyone has hisown trademark style. But you really don’twant it to
look like a painting, and that’s thehardest thing to pull off.
amnh: Who decides the content of the back-ground painting the
time of day, the weath-er, the season, and the other elements?
sean: It becomes a team effort. You’ve gotcurators, planners,
the artist, all of whomdecide what they want. A case in point is
theharbor seal diorama in the Milstein FamilyHall of Ocean Life. In
the old hall there werethese two sleepy-looking harbor seals
sittingon a floe of ice. In the background you saw alittle open
water and some mountains in themisty distance. They were being
shown in
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INTERVIEW withan artist Let’s Talk With Sean Murtha About
Dioramas
Greenland. But harbor seals are one of thefew animals in the
whole hall that also livenear here. I had seen them myself
atMontauk Point, at the very tip of Long Island,which I mentioned
offhand in a meeting.That kind of stuck, and we thought this
wasactually a design concept that it would beinteresting to focus
on the harbor seal as ananimal that you might be able to see within
ashort drive. So we decided to do MontaukPoint in the wintertime.
That was a lot of fun.
amnh: You’ve been hard at work on the dio-ramas in the newly
renovated MilsteinFamily Hall of Ocean Life. What was thetoughest
thing to get right?
sean: I think the toughest one was the ele-phant seal diorama.
It’s set on GuadalupeIsland in Mexico. In the old one there weretwo
males and one female in the foreground,and it was noted that at
breeding time thetwo males would have been fighting and notsitting
side by side, as they were. So we tookone out, and turned the one
that was rearingup menacingly towards the wall, and on thewall we
painted another seal facing him.That was tough. I think it’s the
first time thata major focus of the action has been in
thebackground painting. Also, it’s large, and weput a lot of detail
in it: little islands in thebackground and vistas of distant
coastline, aswell as a lot of little rocks in the foregroundand
lots of seagulls. That one took about amonth and a half.
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INTERVIEW withan artist Let’s Talk With Sean Murtha About
Dioramas
amnh: Do you work off photographs?
sean: Yes, we get pictures off the Internetand from books, and
also use personal pho-tographs. Steve Quinn, the Project Managerin
Exhibition, was the source of most of thepictures for the elephant
seal diorama. He’sbeen there, he takes good photographs, andhe had
the best ones we found.
amnh: How do the photographs get translat-ed onto the grid?
sean: If we’re able to go to the site whichhappened twice in the
Hall, once in Montaukand once in Monterey we take a series
ofpictures that overlap from right to left andcan be transferred to
a grid and then to thewall. If it’s a place we haven’t been, we
onlyhave photographs of separate scenes. I createa scaled-down
sketch in color that goes tomeetings with curators and designers.
That’sthe time to make changes. Once it’s beenapproved, I have a
final sketch that goes ontothe grid on the wall. Photographs
becomereferences, but because they have to beblended or moved
around, there’s a lot that’skind of made up. It’s largely up to me
toassemble the scene. That’s when I draw onthe experience of being
in places that I canthink of as parallel or similar, even if
Ihaven’t been to the one in the drawing.
amnh: Tell us about restoring Jaques’Andros Island mural so that
it could go backon view in the renovated Hall.
sean: That was really a dream come true.The Andros coral reef
was the centerpiece ofthe hall before the blue whale was put in.
Itwas built as a two-story diorama, with thelower half underwater,
showing all the coral
and the fish, and the upper story being thesurface of the water
and views of the islandand the sky. That upper half was all done
byJaques, and it’s a beautiful painting, ofclouds, mainly, and
distant islands andwater. It had been sealed behind a wall inthe
‘60s, and holes had been made in it, cat-walks cut through. When we
got in there, wefound that probably 10 or 12 square feetwere
missing in different places. We plas-tered the spots and I got in
there, painting. Ihad to match Jaques’ colors and style, andthat
was a great thrill because he was a heroof mine from my youth. It
actually wasn’tthat much of a stretch because some of hisstyle was
in my style, due to learning fromhim. It’s fairly seamless; I bet
most peoplewho look at it won’t see the patches.
amnh: Did you discover anything unusualinside the Hall or in any
of its dioramaswhile you were working on them?
sean: Things were left behind, in this hallless than in others.
People always sign theirthings, and we find that everywhere. In
thishall we did find brushes and tubes of paintand cut-out drawings
of birds that weretaped on the wall while they were trying toplot
out their designs. I think they were prob-ably left behind
accidentally. Sometimes wedo leave things for future generations to
find.
amnh: What have you left behind?
sean: I have to keep that a secret.
amnh: When did it first occur to you that youmight work at the
American Museum ofNatural History?
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INTERVIEW withan artist Let’s Talk With Sean Murtha About
Dioramas
sean: It was really an accident. When I gotout of college in
1990, I heard about the fos-sil halls being renovated. I applied,
but I wasnever very good at making phone calls andfinding out who
was the right person to con-tact, and my work’s probably still
floatingaround here somewhere. I didn’t get a calland wound up
taking a job at a children’sbookstore. Many years later, in 1996, I
wasliving on my own out of the city, painting inisolation. I
realized that I needed somefriendships with artists who liked and
didwhat I did, and I found out about a drawingclass here taught by
Steve Quinn ofExhibitions. When I took the class, he reallyliked my
drawings and asked me what I wasdoing. At that time the second
bookstore Iworked at was going out of business, so Iwas open. He
said I should apply for a tem-porary job here, and I got it. They
generallyhire a few extra hands when they have a bigpush for a
show. It was putting up the Ambershow, specifically putting up a
little slice ofrain forest that you could walk around, a
diorama without the background. I wasimmediately put to work
sculpting treetrunks, which was not my area of training,but it was
fun and went well. That led into afull-time job when an opening
appeared, andhere I am.
amnh: What’s your favorite thing about whatyou do?
sean: I think my favorite thing is that thework is different all
the time. Sometimes Ican do what I normally do, like
paintinglandscapes, and sometimes I’m asked to dosomething
completely different. I’ve built aViking ship, I’ve sculpted tree
trunks, I’vedusted dinosaurs. Although the work can betedious, it
can be a nice change. And I lovethe fact that I commute in on the
train with abunch of guys in suits, and I’m in my ripped-up jeans
with paint on my hands.
milstein hall of ocean life
roderick mickens / amnh