Interpretation Of Art Research Articles

Interpretation of «Khutir’s philosophy» in the novel Liuko Dashvar «RAI. center»

At the beginning of the 21st century, a specific category of the artistic model of «peasantry», which is rooted in a peculiarly Ukrainian «philosophy of the heart» (cordocentrism), gets a new life and moves away from religious interpretation, turning towards national, spiritual, anthropological components. In the metaphilosophical sense and interpretation, Ukrainian cordocentrism is a national philosophy, which in artistic images and theoretical concepts expresses the awareness of human integrity and the understanding of the inseparable unity of man with God, spiritual reality, the transcendent. The study of changes and features of the transformation of this worldview in the work of domestic writers, in particular, Liuko Dashvar, would contribute to the continuity of artistic models traditional for Ukrainian literature. Therefore, there is a need for a thorough study of the features of the artistic interpretation of «khutir’s philosophy» as a specific worldview system in modern Ukrainian literature with taking into account its genre and style trends. Thus, in our study, through the prism of «khutir’s philosophy», an analysis of modern youth and the urban rich was carried out with emphasis on two spaces — the city and the small town. The system of characters is built according to two lines: images from the first,«people from the people» (carriers of true spiritual values), opposed to the immoral world of the city, in particular, those in power (the embodiment of social vices). Accordingly, the space of a district center, a town, a village is opposed to a metropolis as a center of decency and humanity to a space of greed and moral degradation. In the novel, the main worldview modes of the «khutir’s philosophy» are correlated with the system of character images and the organization of the artistic space. It was concluded that in Ukrainian literature, the «khutir’s philosophy» retains its significance as a holistic worldview which is manifested in the problematic of the works, the author’s principles of organization of the characters’ system and the chronotope.

Interpretation as Utilization. Some Remarks on the Types of Literary Recycling(Hemingway, Kundera, Bieńczyk)

From a comparative angle, the article describes the kind of artistic interpretation that canbe called the practice of literary recycling, because it consists in transforming one text into another.Artistic interpretation concerns here the transformation of a given work by another artist,on the one hand to explain it or comment on it, and on the other to create a new work. In thistype of artistic interpretation, a pattern becomes apparent, as its function changes from an inspirationto a dominant. Three contrasting interpretations of Ernest Hemingway’s story The HillsLike White Elephants have been used to exemplify this: Harold Bloom’s in his book How to Readand Why, Milan Kundera’s in his collection of essays Testaments Betrayed, and Marek Bieńczyk’sin The Pink Feeders (in Polish Różowe karmniki), included in his book Container (in Polish Kontener).Bieńczyk takes part in the process of literary recycling in a double sense – as a translatorhe paraphrases Kundera’s interpretation of Hemingway’s story, and as a writer he creates a stylizednarrative based on the Hemingway’s text. The article thus foregrounds the concept of artistic interpretationas a form of utilization.

Interpretation of Ballet Art Through Screen Directing Means

The purpose of the article is to carry out a holistic analysis and determine the specifics of directorial means of interpreting ballet art in showing the formation of an artistic personality and delineating scientific guidelines that will contribute to studying the phenomenon of ballet directing in the screen and stage space. Research methodology. The research used an interdisciplinary approach based on the following general scientific methods: induction, deduction, complex art analysis, and synthesis, which contributed to the elaboration of a broad factual basis of the screen interpretation of ballet creativity in the context of the formation of the ballet personality of the performer. Argumentation of the uniqueness of ballet directing in the context of screen art was provided by using methods of systematization and generalization. The typological method helped to consider common artistic principles in the creative pursuits of masters of screen and stage art. Analytical and systematic methods contributed to the study of the art history aspect of the problem. Scientific novelty. The article systematizes and expands scientific ideas about the place and role of screen and stage directing in the system of humanitarian knowledge. The art of directing is defined as a universal type of artistic and aesthetic activity; the mutual influence is clarified and the mutual enrichment of theatrical and audiovisual arts in the development of directing tools is shown. Conclusions. It has been found that the directors' screen creativity expands and deepens knowledge of ballet art, and gives impetus to the active development of the ballet masters’ creativity, ballet performers in the stage space, in particular, in the production of musicals.

What blind people can teach sighted viewers about art

ABSTRACT While sight and hearing have been privileged in the philosophical formulation of aesthetics, the significance of touch to the experience of art has not enjoyed much attention at all. In order to displace sight and reinstate touch as a viable mode of engagement for the interpretation of visual art, this article reports on a study in which blind individuals and sighted people who were blindfolded were interviewed about their experiences of artworks. The participants were invited to touch selected sculptures in South African artist, Willem Boshoff’s Blind Alphabet (1990 – ongoing) installation. The main aim of the study was to investigate the nature of the tactile aesthetic experience elicited by these sculptures when they are handled and not seen. Secondly, the study aimed to reach a deeper understanding of how tactile engagement with art enriches the experience, meaning and power of the work for both those who can and cannot see. Through the investigation it was revealed that visual art can forge a bridge between individuals with and without blindness.

The Influence of Structuralism on the Formation of Contemporary Ukrainian Plastic Art

The article examines the influence of structuralism on the formation of plastic art in Ukraine in the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries. First of all, we are talking about the creativity of the artists working in the field of fine and decorative arts and using wood as a material. It was outlined the defining principles of structuralism based on the works of contemporary researchers. Various structuralist approaches in cultural studies, philosophy and art are considered. For a deeper understanding of the nature of the Ukrainian plastic art the prerequisites for the development of structuralism in the visual arts on the basis of C. Monet's creative revolution and P. Cézanne's deep structural study of nature through geometry have been determined. The importance of P. Mondrian's creative experiments and the concept of neoplasticism introduced by him has been emphasized. The structuralist manifestos of C. Biederman, E. Bornstein and E. Wilmott have been analyzed. The creative method of structural reliefs of the Canadian artist of Ukrainian origin R. Kostyniuk, his inspirations and his own concepts of constructed compositions based on geometric shapes have been studied. In contrast to regular mechanical units and new technical material, the structural sculptures of E. Zelenak revealed the use of biomorphic forms built on the basis of repeating modules. D. Samil's constructed canvases of folded bright planes are mentioned. The article demonstrates the importance of the phenomenon of nonconformism in the Ukrainian artistic environment. Certain peculiarities of the application of theoretical developments in the figurative and plastic author's models of contemporary Ukrainian artists have been highlighted. A number of artistic interpretations and stylistic features in the formation of plastic art in Ukraine in the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries have been revealed. The works of Ukrainian and diaspora artists who worked and continue to work in the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries in Ukraine and abroad, namely R. Kostyniuk, E. Zelenak, D. Samyla, S. Savchenko, I. Stefiuk, V. Andrushko, Y. Titenkov, N. Symotiuk, D. Shavala, A. Savchuk, and I. Solovyov, have been considered. The research objective is to identify and investigate the influence of structuralism on the formation of contemporary Ukrainian plastic art, as well as to analyze the works of artists who used the structural method in their works. Research methodology. The methods of observation, comparison, analogy, experiment, formal analysis and synthesis have been used. Relevance and scientific novelty. In Ukrainian art history, the concept of "structuralism" in three-dimensional structures, sculpture, and plastic art remains poorly understood and requires a deeper study of the connections between the artist's intentions, materials, as well as the historical and cultural context in which the artwork has been created. The research of the influence of structuralism on contemporary Ukrainian sculpture and other forms of plastic art, which are formed on such basic principles of the structural method as code, sign, structure, symbol, and color, reveals a new critical approach to the interpretation of creative experiments as an identifier of a completely new artistic paradigm.

Linguodidactic potential of coloratives in M. Prishvin’s works

The article raises the issue of the linguodidactic potential of coloratives (color denoting words) based on the analysis of M. Prishvin’s tale-story “The Carvel Thicket”. We suggest that any analysis of a literary work involves the study of emotional, psychological, aesthetic and linguodidactic functions of the language used by the author. It helps to show the writer’s world view and the world seen through the eyes of the characters, and to convey the atmosphere of the epoch, scene and events. At the same time, each color, while having its own national and cultural symbolic meaning, has an individual artistic interpretation, thus a special linguocultural comment is required. This Prishvin’s work includes examples of the color semantics extension of the colorative yellow enhancing its meaning. This color, in contrast to ‘red’ and ‘green’, which are used to describe the living pine forest causing admiration, symbolizes the loss of this earthly beauty at the end of the story. “The yellow mass of the round forest”, “skinned yellow whips”, “the dead ones” – in this way M. Prishvin describes the forest emphasizing this color polarity. The article pays special attention to the linguadidactic potential of coloratives: by using the linguistic analysis of coloratives we can develop speech skills formation and international students’ figurative and aesthetic thinking in the course of Russian language learning and reading Russian literature.

Artistic interpretation of real traumatic events in Maria Ogneva’s play “Following the White Rabbit”

The article considers the documentary and fictional components of M. Ogneva’s play “Following the White Rabbit”, which raises the theme of the trauma experienced in the past. The play is based on real events related to the violent death of two teenage girls. In this play, the tragic event is taken out of the storyline and the attention is focused on the understanding of the tragedy by a female friend and the mothers of the girls. The article studies the techniques used by the author to create the fictional world of the play: allegory, allusion, a combination of real and fantasy elements, division and montage, work with documentary materials of a judicial practice, the “verbatim” technique, different types of discourse and different “points of view” to describe one and the same event. As a result of the analysis, we conclude that the strategy used by the author is comparable to a fairy tale therapy (the method of psycho-correctional work): the therapeutic effect is achieved by pronouncing the traumatic experience in the presence of the audience, by the characters’ searches for various options for getting out of the spiritual crisis, by launching the process of continuous moral and ethical self-identification at the viewer’s level, i.e. by correlating the characters’ experience with their own destiny.

Традиции русской и советской культуры в повести Лу Яо «Судьба»

The study aims to shed light on the peculiarities of interpretations of Russian and Soviet culture traditions in Lu Yao’s story “Life” (1982), which became a classic of the Chinese literature of the xúngēn movement in the last third of the XX century. It is the first time that this work by the Chinese prose writer has become the subject of a separate study, in addition, the paper defines the range of works by Russian writers and artists whose traditions are reflected in the story, reveals the role of images and motifs of Russian art in its ideological and artistic singularity, which accounts for the scientific originality of the study. The artistic images of Russian and Soviet art direct references to which are contained in Lu Yao’s work served as the subject of comparative analysis. As a result of the study, it was determined that Lu Yao uses a very wide context of Russian and Soviet culture, including novels by I. A. Goncharov, N. A. Ostrovsky, stories by Ch. T. Aitmatov, V. G. Rasputin, Soviet paintings, and demonstrates adherence to the principles of realistic aesthetics in the story “Life”. The images created by the Chinese author significantly complement the gallery of typological heroes of the Russian literature of the XIX-XX centuries (the hero of the time, the ideal female image, the wise old person), bringing new artistic interpretations in keeping with the Chinese national cultural and historical tradition.

Artistic interpretation of Ito Hirobumi"s assassination by An Jung-geun : Jung Ki-tak and his movie Soul of Patriotism

Artistic interpretation of Ito Hirobumi"s assassination by An Jung-geun : Jung Ki-tak and his movie Soul of Patriotism

Decolonizing Memory and Spaces: Contemporary Narratives about Portugal’s Colonizing Past

The article aims to show contemporary artistic interpretations of colonialism in Portugal as expressed by Afro-descendants from former Portuguese colonies. The primary focus of this study is the ongoing debate surrounding two monuments in Lisbon. The first monument, the Padrão dos Descobrimentos, was originally created in 1940 and subsequently rebuilt in 1960 and is still one of the city’s most recognizable landmarks. The second monument, the Memorial to Enslaved People, is currently under development and seeks to give voice to African communities in Portugal. The analysis is grounded in a theoretical framework that incorporates concepts such as postmemory, multidirectional memory, and dissonant heritage. The broader context for this study is the UNESCO Decade of People of African Descent (2015-2024).

Musical-performing interpretation as a means of forming artistic and analytical skills of future Musical Art teachers

The article actualizes the problem of forming artistic and analytical skills of future Musical Art teachers by means of musical-performing interpretation and proves that the process of training a competent specialist in the field of music education is impossible without developing students’ artistic and analytical skills. On the other hand, the article substantiates the opinion about the significance of artistic and analytical skills as an indispensable factor in the processes of modeling musical-performing interpretation. On the basis of the theoretical analysis of scientific sources, it has been revealed that objectively there are contradictions of scientific and pedagogical nature – between the development of theoretical foundations of artistic interpretation in the field of musicology and musical performance and the lack of scientific research revealing the pedagogical aspects of this problem in the context of artistic and analytical skills formation. The specificity of musical-performing interpretation has been revealed, which is determined by its integrative nature, which is expressed by the unity of artistic and analytical skills of the performer. The authors have proposed their own definition of musical-performing interpretation as a creative and analytical activity of a musician to create the author’s performing interpretation of cultural meanings contained in a musical work. The content and component structure of future Musical Art teachers’ artistic and analytical skills are disclosed. It is proved that the process of formation of artistic and analytical skills during the musical-performing interpretation of the future Musical Art teacher has a systematic complex construction, where at the first stage artistic and analytical skills related to the theoretical-semantic component are formed, at the second stage – the artistic and analytical skills of the methodological-pedagogical component are involved, and at the final stage – the artistic-interpretive component was formed. The study has established that all components of artistic and analytical skills include the integrated formation of intellectual and emotional support, and all components of the intelligence and emotional sphere of the future Musical Art teacher become components of musical-performing interpretation.

Using Visual Arts Education and Reflective Practice to Increase Empathy and Perspective Taking in Medical Students.

Empathy is a critical competency for health care providers. However, empathy levels in medical students and residents have been shown to paradoxically decrease during training. Arts and humanities education and reflective practice may reduce burnout and promote empathy during medical school. We developed and implemented an art education elective for medical students focusing on observation and reflective practice and measured its impact on empathy. Between 2017 and 2022, first-year medical students were offered an annual, 4-week elective led by art educators that featured visualization exercises and discussions on the role of bias and perspective in art interpretation. Curriculum effectiveness and impact on empathy were measured using the validated Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and self-assessments. One hundred twenty-eight students participated in the elective over a 5-year period; 89 (70%) completed assessments. Students reported improvements in empathic communication, recognition of bias, and observation skills. IRI data demonstrated a significant increase in perspective taking (19.0 vs. 20.2; p < .0125). Participation in the elective was associated with self-reported improvements in visual observation, awareness of bias, and empathetic communication. IRI results showed that participants also demonstrated improved perspective taking. Since perspective taking is a cognitive component of empathy, we have provided some empirical evidence that arts education in medical school can promote empathic attitudes and skills.

Hell and Heaven: Film Interpretations of Images in the Context of Mental Representations

The idea of applying the experience of cognitive analysis to visual works of art served as a prerequisite for studying the mental representations of hell and heaven on the basis of the most vivid cinematic images. Two films — “What Dreams May Come” (V. Ward, USA, 1998) and “Heavenly Judgement” (A. Zvantsova, Russia, 2011—2014) — were chosen as the research material. The center of scientific interest is the cognition of the “inner man” through art. The article outlines the trajectory of the development of individual and collective artistic interpretations of the afterlife within Christian culture. It is argued that the concept of hell has spread directly through objects of verbal and non-verbal creativity. This has significantly distorted the original doctrine of life as a path of spiritual transformation. By the will of man, the “infernal picture of the world” embraced the sphere of the Earth and was embodied in reality. At the turn of the 20—21 centuries, in the conditions of rapid technical evolution, there is a reassessment of metaphysical experience. A cognitive analysis of two directorial concepts — heaven and hell as a state of consciousness (V. Ward) and as a fictitious form of life (A. Zvantsova) — reveals an important qualitative change. It consists in the transformation of the concepts of the inner world in relation to the traditional vertical structure “heaven — earth — hell”. In the modern cognitive model, “hell” is located between “heaven” and “earth”. In the boundaries of the inner world (soul) hell directly intersects with or absorbs paradise, and heavenly paradise is practically absent. As a result of comprehending the screen images of heaven and hell in the context of the established mental representations, an updated picture of ideas about postmortem existence and the nature of the soul is formed.

Systemogenesis of performing activity in the music of the XX century

The importance of determining the systemic determinants of cultural genesis of performing art in the context of the ecosystem approach to the interpretation of musical art is emphasized.&#x0D; The purpose of the article is to determine the system-making directions of the transformation of performing activity in music, in particular, in Kyiv vocal school as a phenomenon of sociocultural explanations of the leading determinants of musical synthesis — anthropological, semiological and visual turns.&#x0D; The methodology is determined by comparative and systemic approaches, which make it possible to conduct a comparative analysis of musical systems of performing arts; phenomenological and dialectical methods that help to determine the figurative transformations of musical culture as the integrity of performing strategies — skills, abilities, creativity.&#x0D; The scientific novelty. The theory of systemogenesis and the ecosystem approach to the analysis of large sociocultural systems of reflection provide an opportunity to understand the musical space as a unity of systemogenesis and culturegenesis. Mimetic, logistic and reflexive approaches to the formation of a musician’s performance skill are characterized using the example of vocal and instrumental components of a modern art work. Modern performance skills are technological and specified within the framework of anthropic, media-textual and visual patterns that make an impact on performance. The dichotomy of performance as a division into verbal and instrumental is to a certain extent overcome when all the latest theses, which include information transformation mechanisms on the screen, give a synthetic image. All this, in one way or another, determines the latest genre configurations that often change the trajectory of the development of the systemogenesis of music. Performance in art could not develop without those experiments when vocals enter the symphony, in particular, by A. Schoenberg in “Moon Piero” and others. It could not have developed without those broad creative intentions, which appeared with development of music.&#x0D; The results. More creative, broader and more global systems are emerging that apply the achievements of the virtual, iconic, visual turn, include screen communications, the modern theater scene, which is becoming more radicalized, different than it was before. The ecological instruction as an appeal to metaphysical origins to a certain extent emphasizes the diversity of systemogenesis in performing culture. On the one hand, it is a metaphysical way of shifting all boundaries, on the other hand, it is a local fragmentation and an appeal to the origins of one’s own performing experience in art. All syntheses, which are carried out on the basis of a musical element, musical text, metatext of musical discourse, require adequate performance skills, abilities and creativity. The more different types of arts are involved here, the more they are needed in order to show a musical image integrally and perfectly, to convey an idea. An idea is already a matter of taste, direction, arrangement and a problem of the interaction of various actors of the complex modern process of medialization, dialogue of cultures, artistic tools of various types of arts and performer. After all, the dialogism of performing technologies in music is transformed into a certain miracle. A miracle and a complete artistic image emerge. The image of the completed XX century, which is already understood as a work of art.&#x0D; The practical significance. The practical significance of the study lies in the fact that the categorical apparatus of the ecosystem approach is introduced into the cycle of musicological and cultural reflection, which makes it possible to expand the horizon of the sociocultural functioning of a musical work to its understanding of a certain ecosystem, focused on preserving the cultural and historical potential of musical performance.

Art, Archive, and Fictive Historiography in Lebanon's "Protracted Now"

Abstract: This article analyzes the function of the archival aesthetic found in the works of prominent contemporary Lebanese artists, particularly the manipulation and use of found documents as part of a new visual narrative. Unlike other interpretations of postmodern art in which found documents are a major component, Lebanese artists subordinate the archive (as both object and practice) to the speculative praxis of arriving at a fictive historiography with archival material. As the article will show, this tendency is mimetic of both a contemporary historiographical problematic particular to Lebanon as well as a product of a condition of ongoing forms of violence.

I.S. Shmelev, B.K. Zaitsev: Artistic Interpretation of the Events of the First Russian Revolution in the Aspect of Orthodox Axiology

The events of the First Russian Revolution had a huge impact on Russian society at the beginning of the twentieth century and found multidimensional refl ection in the literature of those years. The range of their perception was large and had its own complex dynamics during the pre-October decade. The purpose of this small study is to refer to the works of writers who comprehended this social experience in those years when a signifi cant part of the Russian democratic intelligentsia was very indifferent to faith, from the standpoint of the Orthodox worldview – the works of I.S. Shmelev and B.K. Zaitsev. It is established that in the works of various genres: in short stories, novellas and novels – in the individual authors’ original interpretation, the process of gradual disillusionment of the Russian democratic intelligentsia in what was happening appeared. The traditional thought about the people’s welfare remained, but the unjustifi ably ruthless price of revolutionary upheavals, crushing the very foundations of national spiritual existence, was rejected by the heroes of those works. It was rejected in the name of the belief in the enduring power and eternal signifi cance of the ideals of the Christian doctrine.

ICON: An Ontology for Comprehensive Artistic Interpretations

In this work, we introduce ICON, an ontology that models artistic interpretations of artworks’ subject matter (i.e., iconographies) and meanings (i.e., symbols, iconological aspects). Developed by conceptualizing authoritative knowledge and notions taken from Panofsky’s levels of interpretation theory, ICON ontology focuses on the granularity of interpretations. It can be used to describe an interpretation of an artwork from the pre-iconographical, icongraphical, and iconological levels. Its main classes have been aligned to ontologies that come from the domains of cultural descriptions (ArCo, CIDOC-CRM, VIR), semiotics (DOLCE), bibliometrics (CITO), and symbolism (Simulation Ontology), to grant a robust schema that can be extendable using additional classes and properties coming from these ontologies. The ontology was evaluated through competency questions that range from simple recognition on a specific level of interpretation to complex scenarios. Data written using this model was compared to state-of-the-art ontologies and schemas to both highlight the current lack of a domain-specific ontology on art interpretation and show how our work fills some of the current gaps. The ontology is openly available and compliant with FAIR principles. With our ontology, we hope to encourage digital art historians working for cultural institutions in making more detailed linked open data about the content of their artifacts, to exploit the full potential of Semantic Web in linking artworks through not only subjects and common metadata but also specific symbolic interpretations, intrinsic meanings, and the motifs through which their subjects are represented. Additionally, by basing our work on theories made by different art history scholars in the last century, we make sure that their knowledge and studies will not be lost in the transition to the digital, linked open data era.

Aesthetics and neural network image representations

We analyze the spaces of images encoded by generative neural networks of the BigGAN architecture. We find that generic multiplicative perturbations of neural network parameters away from the photo-realistic point often lead to networks generating images which appear as “artistic renditions” of the corresponding objects. This demonstrates an emergence of aesthetic properties directly from the structure of the photo-realistic visual environment as encoded in its neural network parametrization. Moreover, modifying a deep semantic part of the neural network leads to the appearance of symbolic visual representations. None of the considered networks had any access to images of human-made art.

A FOLKLORE EVENT AS AN EXISTENTIAL PERSPECTIVE OF A NON-RITUAL LYRO-EPIC WORK

The article examines the peculiarities of the representation of an existential event in a folklore work, primarily, the function of the existential word. It emphasizes that the category of freedom in the perception of the natural characteristics of a person and their spiritual integrity correlates in lyric-epic works with the understanding of a moral act as an individual decision and an axiom of the entire life path.&#x0D; The work focuses on the peculiarities of the existential consciousness of the author-performer, which are revealed in the folklore work through the understanding of the uniqueness of each person, the moments of entering their life world into the world of other people. This can be traced on the example of ballads, chronicle songs, emigrant, rebel, prison songs, etc. The plot modeling of a non-ritual folklore work makes it possible to present each individual act of a person in the aspect of meaning-making of the whole life. So, the folklore event represents such an ethical-philosophical paradigm that makes it possible to understand the act as a fact of unique, unrepeatable being and the moral-ethical dimension of this fact.&#x0D; The work focuses on how a poetic word in a folklore work stands out in the field of perception of an important episode of a person's life, which in an artistic interpretation becomes a significant folklore event. The author-performer presents their own vision of the causes of life's drama, and this assessment becomes a kind of invective for understanding important moral imperatives.&#x0D; On the basis of examples of lyrical-epic folklore, one can understand the true dimension of the ontological values of the ethnos, in which all events, realities of reality, human actions are shown not in some chosen hierarchy, but in the constant flow of complex and contradictory human existence. The author-performer presents all subjects and objects in a single plane, giving each of them an important meaning.

The natural history of lions in North Africa and the relevance of their depiction in the “Lions Attacking a Dromedary” diorama

AbstractThe diorama “Lions Attacking a Dromedary” is notorious, not just as a remarkable 19th century example of taxidermy, but also its controversial representation of human culture and animals, its questionable accuracy and the murky ethics of the materials sourced for its construction. This study examines whether the diorama is a reasonable representation of the Barbary lion in North Africa. We review the history of lions in North Africa and their interaction with humans in the 19th and 20th centuries. The ecology and biology of North African lions, supported by scientific knowledge of the species, enables assessment of the value of diorama depiction, whether it is realistic and informative, or an artistic interpretation, or mere fiction. Furthermore, if the depiction is fictional, whether the representation is entirely unrepresentative, or at worst a stereotypic fabrication based on Western colonial perspectives of the 1800s. The paper does not explore cultural aspects, although refers to the experiences of people in local communities as well as colonial visitors through 150 documented accounts of lions in the region (modern day Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) between 1830 and 1960. The analysis explores whether real experiences are reflected in the depiction presented in the diorama and identifies that some aspects of the exhibit can be considered authentic, while others appear to emphasize drama rather than lived reality. Recommendations are offered for well‐informed future presentation of “Lions Attacking a Dromedary.”