AMNH Exhibitions Lab

The AMNH Exhibitions Lab or AMNH Department of Exhibition is an interdisciplinary art and research team at the American Museum of Natural History that designs and produces museum installations, computer programs and film. Founded in 1869, the lab has since produced thousands of installations, many of which have become celebrated works. The department is notable for its integration of new scientific research into immersive art and multimedia presentations. In addition to the famous dioramas at its home museum and the Rose Center for Earth and Space, the lab has also produced international exhibitions and software such as the revolutionary Digital Universe Atlas.

The exhibitions team currently consists of over sixty artists, writers, preparators, designers and programmers. The department is responsible for the creation of two to three exhibits per year, making the AMNH one of the most extensive exhibition creators in the world. These extensive shows typically travel nationally to sister natural history museums. Due to the strong relationship between the lab and the museum's extensive research and curation wing, the department has been among the first to introduce brand new topics to the public. They have produced, among others, the first exhibits to discuss Darwinian evolution,human-induced climate change and the mesozoic mass extinction via asteroid.

The AMNH Dioramas have themselves become major historic attractions, and possibly the best known works of the exhibitions lab. Notable among them is the Akeley Hall of African Mammals which opened in 1936, at a time before widespread color photography. The hall showcases the vanishing wildlife of Africa in spaces where the human presence is notably absent, and includes hyperrealistic depictions of elephants, hippopotamuses, lions, gorillas, zebras, and various species of antelope, including the rarely seen aquatic sitatunga. Some of the displays are up to 18 feet (5 m) in height and 23 feet (7 m) in depth.

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