The World’s Fair
"The exhibit which he has brought to the World’s Fair is the result of ten years’ work in the field collecting and fourteen months’ work in the taxidermy shop with five assistants. The professor, who is curator of birds and mammals of the State University of Kansas, has devoted himself to making such an exhibit that the whole world will be compelled to acknowledge the superiority of the State of Kansas in this line."
---“Kansas Grand Show, Animals Brought from the Great Sunflower State, Professor L.L. Dyche of the State University, and the Work of His Genius,” Chicago Evening Post, December 18, 1892.
In anticipation of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the University of Kansas proposed to display Dyche’s mounted collection of mammals. By October of 1892, the Kansas Building was dedicated and the first erected on the grounds of Columbian Exposition. The Kansas Building included a sixty-by eighty foot chamber designed specifically for Dyche’s display of mammals, comprising the north wing. Shortly, after Dyche loaded eight railroad cars to transport his collection of large mammals to Chicago. Arriving at the fair and fearing thieves who plagued the fairgrounds, Dyche remained with his display at all times. Dyche’s living quarters while at the fair were in fact within the artificial mountain crafted for the display of his groups of mountain goats and sheep. Dyche with the help of his assistants used papier-maché to create the groundwork for the exhibit and integrated real plants and rocks when possible. The setting was a panoramic view with a painted backdrop and represented the different geographical regions of the mammals on display. It was one of the largest natural history panoramas ever attempted in the world. The display was lit with natural light through skylights and the mammals were protected by a pole fence from fair visitors. However, Dyche had constructed a path through the groundwork of his display through which he could lead guided tours. In presenting the large mammals in their natural habitat, free of explanatory text, the animals of the panorama invited urban visitors to see nature.
Also, included as part of the Kansas Building exhibits was the mounted horse Comanche, the only survivor of the U.S. Calvary force at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. After Comanche’s death in 1891, Dyche was asked to preserve the horse, which he agreed to if the horse could be displayed at the World’s Fair.
The Columbian Exposition ran from May 1 through October 31, 1893, and would see some 716,881 visitors a day. The fairgrounds included two hundred and twenty buildings with over sixty-five thousand exhibits. The Kansas Building was the third largest of the state buildings and about a third of the space was dedicated to Dyche’s display of mammals. One hundred and twenty-one mammals were included in the display, arranged in groups, and of various ages and genders. Mammals included in Dyche’s exhibition were all mounted specifically by himself and included: mountain lions, moose, black-tailed prairie dogs, gray wolves, foxes, bison, jack rabbits, wolverines, grizzly bear, lynx, coyotes, elk (wapiti), pronghorn, mountain goats, mountain sheep, deer, and caribou.
Dyche’s display was a massive success and drew crowds of ten to twelve thousand visitors daily to the Kansas Building. In the final two months of the fair eighteen to twenty thousand visitors were recorded. Columbian Exposition was an urban venue, to many Dyche’s panorama was a pleasant reminder of a preindustrial world.
“In the north wing of the of the Kansas Building is one of the most remarkable exhibits to be seen at the great Fair…the work of a man who is recognized by naturalists as the best taxidermist in the country, if not in the world…Artists and professional men from all over the world who have seen it say this is the finest group of mounted animals they have seen, and that there is nothing like it in the world.”
---F.D. Palmer, “The Kansas Exhibit of Mounted Specimens of the Animals of the State,” Scientific American 69, no. 3 (July 15, 1893): 41-42.
L. L. Dyche's mounts of large North American mammals from the 1893 World's Fair exhibit.
For a closer look at the Panorama as it appeared in the World's Fair, click on the link below to explore an interactive image that highlights individual animals and views of the space.
Sources:
Shankel, Carol and Barbara Watkins. Dyche Hall: University of Kansas Natural History Museum 1903-2003. Lawrence, KS: Historic Mount Oread Fund, 2003.
Sharp, Bill and Peggy Sullivan. The Dashing Kansas, Lewis Lindsay Dyche: The Amazing Adventures of a Nineteenth-Century Naturalist and Explorer. Kansas City, MO: Harrow Books, 1990.