author
Arminta Neal
A pioneering museum exhibit designer, artist, and writer, she helped shape how generations of visitors experienced natural history museums. Her books share that same practical, imaginative spirit, turning display-making and dioramas into something inviting and hands-on.
1 Audiobook
Cigar-Box Dioramas: A "How-to-do-it" Handbook
by Arminta Neal
About the author
Arminta "Skip" Neal was an American exhibit designer, artist, and author best known for her long career at the Denver Museum of Natural History, now the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Sources from the museum and archival records describe her as a major force behind exhibits created there from 1950 until her retirement in 1982, with a strong focus on what visitors would actually see, feel, and understand.
She also wrote accessible, practical books, including Exhibits for the Small Museum and Cigar-Box Dioramas. Those works reflect the same clear, maker-minded approach seen in her museum career: careful craftsmanship, visual storytelling, and a desire to help other people create engaging displays with limited resources.
Museum and archival sources also note that Neal served in the military and later shared her life story through an oral history interview. Even in a short overview, what stands out is how much of her work was about making knowledge tangible—through exhibits, models, photographs, and hands-on creative instruction.