Interview 9511 – Caption Index: 519
On another exhibit, we had talked about collecting a little, but how difficult was it to collect birds for the World of Birds exhibit?… Read More
On another exhibit, we had talked about collecting a little, but how difficult was it to collect birds for the World of Birds exhibit?… Read More
Did they come from the wild?… Read More
Did this exhibit have a conservation conclusion that you have tried to do then in future buildings that you did, or was this a little earlier in that development?… Read More
This was earlier, and the effort here was really to interpret for the visitor the behavior of animals who earn their living at night, because it was so little known. And that in itself, I think helps to build a constituency, excitement, which you can turn into conservation, but every… Read More
Are there still animals physically in it?… Read More
I don’t know. But it’s an interesting situation because it opened up to the visitor, a whole part of the animal’s world with which they were otherwise unfamiliar. Read More
When the building opened, we had lines of people, six people wide extending for 1/2 a mile. The first day it opened, we had 62,000 people that one day, and it remained an extremely popular building. It was not without problems in my opinion. Because it was dark, we had… Read More
But the building worked very well indeed. And the building is closed now, you know that. When the zoo, this happened, I guess last year or a year before, the zoo close many exhibits because of cutbacks in its budget. And so they closed that building. They wanted to close… Read More
Almost a majority, perhaps a majority of mammals are nocturnal. Most mammals see the world in shades of gray. The World of Darkness at the Bronx Zoo came about as the vision of the mammal curator, in those days, Joseph Davis. And Joe felt that he could exhibit colorblind animals… Read More
And he changed all the lights to red in one nocturnal section and put them on a reverse light cycle, making them bright white light at night. The building was so successful and so popular that the World of Darkness as a concept came about and Joe Davis led its… Read More
Easy, difficult?… Read More
Did it survive the test of time?… Read More
Let’s talk about the development of an exhibit called World of Darkness, your initial vision of it, dealing with the board, getting the funds, how did the public receive it?… Read More
Getting animals, deciding what they would be?… Read More
How did you bring the various thinkers in and the various people who were going to help?… Read More
I remember I discussed this with Congo at length, with the exhibits, people, the curators, vets, everybody. I can discuss it again if you’d like, but it’s the same story. Okay. number nine. Okay. (indistinct) answer. Read More
What was involved from maybe something, an idea you had seen or carried through to, (indistinct)?… Read More
I don’t understand what you’re saying, Mark, what animal themes. I want us to talk about Congo specifically, but when you were thinking about the World of Birds, in a sense of a theme that you were going to do, what was the process then after you came up with,… Read More
And it works. You developed animal themes at the zoo. Read More
Could you take us kind of through the process of how did this come about the process?… Read More