Bell Museum Sketchathon
As the Bell Museum prepares to move to its new home on the UMN St. Paul campus, there has been a flurry of sketching activity and events to document the museum's current home in Minneapolis. One of these events is the Sketchathon, an all night event where a sketcher can have a field day (or field night, as it were!) capturing the amazing dioramas without crowds or the pressure of closing time. My goal is to sketch all of the smaller dioramas around the perimeter of the museum.
I started with the Prairie Chickens. My father tells a story that Walter Breckenridge, the creator/builder of this diorama, used to visit the Sausen family farm to draw the prairie chickens. I'm not even sure if this happened during my father's childhood or earlier in the 20th century. No matter the time, the story of the prairie chickens is one of the many tiny ways I feel connected to this museum.
I started with the Prairie Chickens. My father tells a story that Walter Breckenridge, the creator/builder of this diorama, used to visit the Sausen family farm to draw the prairie chickens. I'm not even sure if this happened during my father's childhood or earlier in the 20th century. No matter the time, the story of the prairie chickens is one of the many tiny ways I feel connected to this museum.
T. S. Roberts took his classes to the Sausen farm before Breck did. I always thought Breck went there with birding classes. At any rate, there was a lek there (store this as an item of lost geography. There was also a lek at I494 and Hwy 100. And when I think of it, Breck might have visited both places to take movies of the courtship dance.
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