ClayMirror

Dawn by Oddo Nerdrum (1989)

Steven Meisel for Visionaire #28 (1999)

The Cell directed by Tarsem Singh (2000)

Katrin Koenning, from “Glow”

This diorama at the American Museum of Natural History was amended in a way that allows museumgoers to see the historical inaccuracies it perpetuates.Credit Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

On the first floor of the American Museum of Natural History, a diorama depicts an imagined 17th-century meeting between Dutch settlers and the Lenape, an Indigenous tribe inhabiting New Amsterdam, now New York City. It was intended to show a diplomatic negotiation between the two groups, but the portrayal tells a different story.

The scene takes place in what is now known as the Battery, with ships on the horizon. The tribesmen wear loincloths, and their heads are adorned with feathers. A few Lenape women can be seen in the background, undressed to the waist, in skirts that fall to midcalf. They keep their heads down, dutiful. In front of a windmill are two fully clothed Dutchmen, one of them resting a firearm on his shoulder. The other, Peter Stuyvesant, colonial governor of New Netherland, is graciously extending his hand, waiting to receive offerings brought by the Lenape.

Critics have said the diorama depicts cultural hierarchy, not a cultural exchange. Museum officials said they had been aware of these implications for a while, and now they have addressed them.

The narrative, created in 1939, is filled with historical inaccuracies and clichés of Native representation, said Bradley Pecore, a visual historian of Menominee and Stockbridge Munsee descent. “These stereotypes are problematic, and they’re still very powerful. They shape the American public’s understanding of Indigenous people.”

About a year ago, the museum asked Mr. Pecore to help solve the diorama problem. Should it be removed entirely? Could the protective glass be temporarily taken out, and what was behind it altered?

Lauri Halderman, the museum’s vice president for exhibition, said, “We could have just covered it over.” Instead, museum officials decided on a more transparent approach. “What was actually more interesting was not to make it go away,” Ms. Halderman continued, “but to acknowledge that it was problematic.”

The solution offers a lesson in the changing nature of history itself. And it’s written on the glass.