Eleanor's BreyerFest Diorama Contest entry

Due to circumstances beyond my control, this is my last post about the BreyerFest Diorama Contest. I had originally planned at least one more multi-artist showcase, but those photos went away with everything elese. My apologies to everyone who was hoping to see their entries here. I really wish things were different. 

Night at the Museum: Escape from the Attic (Greek Vase)

by Eleanor Harvey

I did something this year I've been meaning to do , but for which I never had the time. Until the pandemic. I made a diorama for the Breyerfest contest. And here it is:

Late at night, animals in art from antiquity to the present day are stirring within the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The source of the animating force is a powerful amulet and the museum’s unofficial mascot: William, the blue faience hippo (see below). To prevent wholesale carnage, William directs his energy to different groups of animals each night. Saturday nights belong to the horses.

 As William’s electromagnetic waves reach Gallery 155, the horses painted on the black-figure vases come to life. Spooked by an unexpectedly strong jolt of power, four horses harnessed to a chariot bolt from Exekias’s vase and take off, leaving behind their startled charioteers and onlookers. 

Tiny horses painted on the vase’s shoulder abandon their battle scene as soldiers react in alarm. 

Exekias’s horses careen through the galleries, running rings around the giant drafters from Rosa Bonheur’s Horse Fair, their exuberance a source of bemusement for the calm, rotund ponies peeking out of their Chinese scrolls. Throughout the night, a panoply of horses throughout art history splash in the pool outside the Temple of Dendur before reluctantly returning to their disrupted artworks, their tiny wet hoofprints going unnoticed by the officers making their morning rounds.

Disclaimer: several Breyer products were harmed in the making of this diorama, specifically four stablemates, three mini whinnies (one is on the back), and what used to be a four-wheeled cart.