CATALYST
DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE ONLINE MAGAZINE
Pride Month: Leaving a Legacy at the Museum
Celebrating Artist, Veteran and Exhibition Designer Arminta “Skip” Neal
Arminta P. Neal with model of Old World Hall. Catalogue number: IV.0088-042-02 (Photo/ Denver Museum of Nature & Science)
For a recognition of Pride Month here at the Museum, we are honored to introduce readers to Arminta “Skip” Neal, a gifted artist, veteran and museum professional who shaped exhibition design during her 32-year career at the Museum from 1950 to 1982. In 2001, Arminta shared her life story for the “Old Lesbian Oral History Project,” available at Smith College Archives. All quotes in this article are drawn from that interview.
Arminta was a talented artist from a young age. Inspired by children’s classes at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, she dreamed of becoming a scientific illustrator. “I thought… Somebody has to draw the pots and the bones and the arrowheads that they collect… And I could draw them really well.”
After earning a Fine Arts degree from UCLA in 1943, she worked for Douglas, a defense contractor, before serving in the Women’s Army Corps from 1944 to 1946. Her dream of becoming a scientific illustrator still strong, she wrote to museums all over the country trying to find work under the GI Bill. In late 1947, the Denver Art Museum hired her to illustrate pieces from their Native American collection and help create exhibits.
Arminta "Skip" Neal working on a neanderthal diorama from the Hall of Ancient Man. (Photo/ Denver Museum of Nature & Science)
In 1950 she became a preparator in the Denver Museum of Natural History’s Department of Archaeology where she participated in field work and designed some of the Museum’s first anthropological and ethnographic exhibits, including the Neanderthal diorama now preserved in the DMNS Archives. She became curator of Graphic Design in 1959, overseeing planning, design and production of all exhibitions with the exception of the wildlife habitat dioramas.
Eight years later, as Curator of Anthropology, she managed the acquisition of the Mary and Francis Crane North American Indian Collection, resulting in the creation of Crane Hall. Her proudest professional accomplishment was helping to establish the DMNH Native American Advisory Council, one of the first Indigenous Peoples consultation groups of its kind in the nation. “I told them they had veto power,” she recalled. “And I don't think they believed us at first, until something came up that they objected to… Some of them told me later that they had never heard of a museum before doing that.”
Arminta Neal with Frank Harvey, a Navajo medicine man in Crane Hall in 1977. (Photo/ Denver Museum of Nature & Science)
In 1975, she was promoted to Assistant Director of Exhibits Planning, centralizing all exhibit design under one department. Upon retiring in 1981, she came out as a lesbian to two colleagues. “I took them aside and told them. And one of them said, ‘Well, I wondered.’ And the other one said, ‘So?’”
In retirement, Arminta sang in the Denver Women’s Choir, taught art classes and workshops, and traveled widely. Her legacy endures in the Museum’s commitment to responsible stewardship and visitor-centered exhibition design. Many of her drawings, publications, and exhibit planning files are accessible in the Archives.
Arminta Neal teaching Elder Hostel drawing class in 2000 in Los Ojos, New Mexico. (Photo/ Marj Becker)
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