Look closely at this three-dimensional scene, featuring a pair of exuberant dancers. "You've been enslaved for 250 years, and now you're free, and this is jubilation and joy," said professor Jontyle Robinson.
The director of the Legacy Museum at Alabama's Tuskegee University, she describes the scene as the moment of emancipation. "It's a moment that is pregnant with possibility," she told correspondent Rita Braver.
The diorama was created for the American Negro Exposition mounted 80 years ago this summer to celebrate African American achievements since the end of slavery. Known as the "Black World's Fair," it was held at the imposing Chicago Coliseum. "If you wanted to understand something about African Americans in 1940, it was there for you at the exposition," said Robinson.
There had never been anything like it. President Franklin Roosevelt pushed the button that turned the lights on Opening Day. There were all kinds of exhibits, including a Hall of Fame honoring notable African Americans. Jazz legend Duke Ellington entertained the crowd.
And at the center of it all was a huge hall featuring 33 dioramas.
Braver asked, "What were they trying to show?"
"That African American people have contributed enormously to this country's development and wealth," Robinson replied.
Made of wood, plaster and Masonite, with human figures often clay or carved wood, they portray scenes from Black history:
Matthew Henson, one of the first men to reach the North Pole;
The death of Crispus Attucks, a dockworker believed to be the first colonist killed in the revolution;
And the landing of enslaved people from Africa, in Virginia, in 1619.
Robinson said, "How can you not be swayed by what you see here?"
These dioramas are all recently restored. How that happened is quite a story.
The 33 dioramas were all created under the direction of Charles Dawson, a noted commercial artist. When the exposition ended, Dawson brought 20 dioramas to Tuskegee, where he had once been a student. What happened to the other 13 is an enduring mystery.
But over the years those 20 dioramas fell into disrepair, and Robinson believed it was essential for African Americans to help restore these works portraying their history. But there was a problem.
Braver asked, "There's just not very many African Americans who work in the field of museum conservation, are there?"
"There are not, she replied, "and so it was mandatory that I work to try to figure out a way for African American students to learn this discipline."
So, Robinson helped launch a groundbreaking program, the Alliance of HBCU Museums and Galleries, enlisting some top art restoration centers, like one run jointly by Winterthur Museum and the University of Delaware, to introduce Black students to the field of conservation by working on the dioramas.