Under Construction
As the saying goes: It’s not about them; it’s about us. THE ANIMALS MUSEUM may be virtual, but its purpose is two-fold: to shine light on the relationship between animals and humans throughout world history, and to raise funds toward a real-life museum for animals in a major city.
The Animals Museum has its own history
I will leave it to others to compare what humans have done to humans to what humans have done to animals, so it wasn’t the ‘content’ of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that spurred my idea to create a museum for animals. The D.C.-based Holocaust museum is a masterpiece unto itself. Using several floors of artifacts, video, photography, and audio, it has an unprecedented design in presenting the horrors of this human tragedy to its visitors. Its layout allows one to choose how much and how deep into the Holocaust they wish to go, from an overall documentary of events to the more graphic and compelling evidence.
In 1990, Bill Dyer (In Defense of Animals) and I found each other in the crowd at the March for Animals in D.C. with one thing on our minds: an animals museum. Before we could even tell the other about our idea, we realized, without finishing our sentences, that we were speaking of the same thing.
But a museum is a costly endeavor, so we’ve chosen the Internet as a means to create a virtual museum to then be used as a fundraising tool for a building in a major city, most probably in Los Angeles. Our pursuit of dream for a museum that documents the terrible and the fantastic relationship humans have shared with other animals is not over yet.
The Animals Museum is not about animals; it’s about humans and their relationship with animals throughout time and space
Features will be:
Exhibits
Like all museums, The Animals Museum will feature exhibits that tell the story about our fascination with and our dominance over the rest of the animal kingdom. In our virtual museum, these exhibits will be designed with Flash to give the visitor an interactive experience with the exhibit evidence.
Virtual Rooms
The virtual museum, as will be the real one when it comes to pass, will feature exhibit halls, if you will, rooms into which the visitor enters that focus on a particular area of animal/human relationship, such as ‘Animals as Food,’ ‘Animals as Entertainment,’ ‘Animals as Science,’ etc.
Interactive
A virtual museum will allow the visitor to go as deeply into the ‘story’ as they wish to go; i.e., from compelling editorial to graphic video.
Good & Bad
Though The Animals Museum is a documentary of the exploitation and unkind treatment of animals, it is also a showcase of our love and fascination for animals, from our spiritual connections with them to our mimicry and idolation. In music, art, film, imitation, etc., humans have adored animals.
A Building
The virtual museum for animals will serve as a fundraising tool in order to enable us to one day purchase an actual building into which we can exhibit real-life evidence.
Donating
Your donation to both the virtual museum and an upcoming ‘real life’ museum will go a long way in teaching visitors (both online and in the flesh) about the plight of animals in human hands, as well as what makes them worthy of our celebration and protection.
An Animals Museum is inevitable.
