The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History exhibits team has been hard at work over the last year. Updating and restoring a diorama in the Santa Barbara Gallery were, from left, Francisco Lopez, Frank Hein, Florine deWith and Debra Darlington. 
Ornithologist Willian Leon Dawson, in a circa 1916 photo, founded the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History in — literally — his Mission Canyon backyard. 
Luke Swetland, president and CEO of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, encourages visitors to make full use of the entire 17-acre campus. “Come play in our Backyard and you will look at your own backyard differently and more carefully,” he says. 
Eery diorama in Mammal Hall has been restored and updated as part of the museums centennial capital campaign. 
The museum’s updated Backyard includes a transformed nature clubhouse, the new Sprague Butterfly Pavilion, a “paleo” dig area, picnic area and base camp.
[Noozhawk’s note: Second in a series sponsored by the Hutton Parker Foundation. Click here for the first article.]
When planning the now nearly completed Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History’s $20 million centennial campaign, one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle was ensuring that what visitors loved about the aging campus would remain while still bringing it into modern times.
Now, museum staff believe they have accomplished the task they set out to do.
“The end goal was to move the museum into the 21st century, move forward and honor the past that people love about this place,” exhibits director Frank Hein said about the multimillion-dollar capital campaign.
The undertaking enabled every diorama in Mammal Hall to be restored and updated in the span of a year, which began in September 2017.
“It was the most intense,” Hein told Noozhawk. “Almost everything in there is new.”
The updated dioramas have new or refurbished taxidermy, new LED lighting — which museum staff say has improved the regional exhibits substantially — interpretive panels, paint and hands-on elements that have been placed strategically to engage young visitors.
“There are a lot more touchables at the kid level,” Briana Sapp Tivey, the museum’s director of marketing and communications, said of the new hands-on elements, such as the popular skunk button in Mammal Hall.
Visitors at the display can press a button, which then simulates getting sprayed by a skunk as a whoosh of air blows into their faces.
Sapp Tivey said the state-of-the-art, interactive display has been a hit with the museum’s youngest visitors, much like the now-vintage but also interactive rattlesnake button that has been at the museum for years.
“We want to be a serious and scientifically rigorous (museum), but we want to be fun, too,” she said, adding that each diorama represents a region in Santa Barbara County.
Sapp Tivey also noted that the original redwood framing of numerous dioramas in Mammal Hall, which is viewed as the museum’s “chapel of natural history,” was exposed as part of the restoration process.
The museum also was able to save the majority of its taxidermy. Some of the animals in the dioramas are up to 80 years old, but it’s hard to know looking at them.
In addition, each panel has new text and interpretative signage showing the level of threat to a species’ existence.
“It feels like what the people who built the museum in the 1920s would have done if they had the tools of today,” Hein explained. “The lighting is magical. The dioramas have to be bright and pop.”
Much of the same was done in adjoining Bird Hall, which also underwent a months-long restoration and transformation. Visitors now can interact with 3D objects such as bird nests, eggs and the bones of a heron, for example, while perusing every single bird species that lives in the county.
“We are a regional museum, so everything you can find in the museum, you can find in the region,” Sapp Tivey said.
Founded in 1916, the museum initially was the backyard of ornithologist William Leon Dawson, an avid collector of birds’ eggs and their nests. Dawson founded the museum at the site where the multibuilding campus stands today, calling it the Museum of Comparative Oology — the study of bird eggs.
The Museum of Natural History opened on the creekside property in 1923 and has continued to grow over the years as a regional research and educational institution.
The museum now includes more than 3.5 million specimens covering all aspects of natural history, from birds, mammals and marine life to geology, paleontology, anthropology and astronomy.
The museum also is home to the Gladwin Planetarium, the only full-dome planetarium on the Central Coast, boasting 46 seats and three telescopes, including one that can be used for solar viewing. All of the scopes are research grade, according to museum staff.
“This is the place to show off Santa Barbara,” Hein said, adding that the newly revamped Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History remains the same facility that people loved before the renovation work, only better. The updated halls and other site improvements were unveiled in June.
“It’s both the museum you’ve always loved, but it’s also new, exciting and fun enough for return visits,” Hein said. “There are layers of all kinds of stuff.”
As part of the centennial campaign, the museum updated its Backyard, including a transformed nature clubhouse and the new Sprague Butterfly Pavilion. The backyard area is home to a “paleo” dig area, picnic area and base camp, where school-age kids from Paso Robles to Camarillo can learn about the area’s natural history by handling items such as skulls, rocks and feathers.
The museum’s 17-acre site along Mission Creek is the longest stretch of undeveloped property along the waterway and is studded with towering oak trees shading the property. Visitors are encouraged to play, eat lunch, read a book or just enjoy being outside.
“The museum really is indoor/outdoor,” Sapp Tivey said. “There isn’t one way to go through. I think half of the beauty of the museum is on the outside. There’s a lot here for a small town.”
Luke Swetland, museum president and CEO, said part of making the museum current meant knitting together the facility’s unique advantages and opportunities in a way that made it both “approachable and beautiful” for visitors.
Swetland views the campus as Santa Barbara’s backyard and encourages young, old and those in the middle to come out to explore all that the property has to offer, including its several galleries and the research library.
He said public response to the changes has been overwhelmingly positive.
“We really took our time to do the restoration and renovation,” Swetland said, adding that the centennial project was 10 years in the making before its official launch.
By taking its time and using community feedback, he said, the museum’s board of directors ended up with a “much more contemporary and visitor-centric” facility that is still “intimate, charming and beautiful.”
“There are always reasons to come back to explore the galleries and property,” Swetland said. “It’s pretty easy. Come play in our Backyard and you will look at your own backyard differently and more carefully.
“You will also care more about the global backyard.”
The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, at 2559 Puesta del Sol, is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Click here for more information about the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, or call 805.682.4711. Click here to make an online donation.
— Noozhawk contributing writer April Charlton can be reached at news@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
