The dioramas at Joelanta and The Great Atlanta Toy Convention embody the true spirit of convention’s beneficiary, The Cody Lane Memorial Toy and Diorama Museum. This a proposed space dedicated to preserving the artistry and celebrating the educational value of creative play. The museum is still looking for a permanent home, but at the moment, and running until late March, the Historic Train Depot in Stone Mountain Georgia is playing host to a temporary exhibit (actually three different exhibits, changing with the seasons).
On our last full day in Georgia your PopCulteer and his wife made the drive over to Stone Mountain to see the exhibit and also to visit with our friends, Marten Jallad and E. J. White, of JoeLanta and The Great Atlanta Toy Convention fame.
The exhibit, in a nicely-lit room at the Train Depot, consists of a great collection of vintage toys as well as some of the impressive giant dioramas that were on display at JoeLanta in previous years. You will see the work of master dioramists like Mike Gardner, Steve Bugg and Bryan Tatum who contribute every year to the expansive coolness of JoeLanta and The Great Atlanta Toy Convention.
The Cody Lane Memorial Toy and Diorama Museum is dedicated to Cody Martin Lane, an avid collector and member of the Atlanta GI Joe Collectors Club, who passed away 2007, after a long battle with a degenerative neurological disorder called CIDP. He was 17 years old.
Cody collected many types of action figures, from Civil War heroes to Lord of the Rings characters to, of course, GI Joes. He was particularly fond of the dioramas designed and built by the Joe Club members. After his passing, the Atlanta GI Joe Club decided to create a museum in honor of Cody’s favorite art form: the diorama.
The eventual goal of Joelanta and The Great Atlanta Toy Convention is to help open a Toy and Diorama Museum in Atlanta GA dedicated to the artform that Cody loved. The exhibit at Stone Mountain is open most Fridays and Saturdays until March 31, 2017. For more information visit the Stone Mountain or JoeLanta websites.
PopCult apologies, but due to technical issues, most of the following photos will appear without captions. Still, we hope they give you a good idea of how much fun this temporary exhibit is, and how cool the proposed permanent museum will be.
E.J. White, your PopCulteer Rudy Panucci and Marten Jallad, enjoying the toy-tastic goodness of the exhibit. Check back for more PopCult photo essays Friday.
“Very Nice!”
Would you be interested in my military dinky toy collection of about 40 items for your museum