Happy child in front of white sculpted walls resembling ice. In the background a sign reading "frozen reign, a state of change" is shown.

Ice Age Gallery

Indiana State Museum

The Indiana State Museum, confident in our prior work on their Natural Regions gallery, selected Taylor Studios to design and construct their Ice Age Gallery. The primary goal was to create a deeply immersive exhibit that would transport visitors to the late Pleistocene epoch, guaranteeing a truly memorable experience.

We rose to this challenge, engineering a dramatic, sub-glacial ice tunnel diorama as the gallery’s “big wow” feature. This realistic, large-scale environment reflects the moment the Wisconsinan Continental Ice Sheet began its retreat, approximately 17,000 years ago.

The multi-sensory experience begins immediately: as patrons approach the entrance, they feel and hear icy wind blasts, while the exterior creates the illusion of a massive, receding glacier. Inside the immersive tunnel, visitors walk on a textured floor, encounter the remains of a trickling stream, and hear the dripping, creaking sounds of glacial melt. The interpretive design is enhanced by realistic details, including rough layers of “dirty” ice and models of pioneer vegetation. A taxidermy male musk ox, snowy owl, and snowshoe hare populate the scene, bringing the ancient landscape to life.

This breathtaking gallery sets a new standard for thematic environmental design, successfully taking visitors on a truly deep dive into a long-ago age, fully utilizing full-service exhibit design and fabrication to exceed the Museum’s expectations.

Happy child in front of white sculpted walls resembling ice. In the background a sign reading "frozen reign, a state of change" is shown.
Entrance view of an ice cave with a sign to the left stating "step inside a recreated ice tunnel" and words on the floor that say "Earth's climate grew colder. Thick sheets of ice covered Indiana."
Replicated scene of a mammoth sinking half in the ground and only his upper body is shown. In the foreground a small mammoth replica model and two signs are shown.