CALL OF THE WILD MAGAZINE | 2017-18 | CELEBRATING 30 YEARS
CALL OF THE WILD SANCTUARY ON THE HILL
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTO ARK
JANE GOODALL’S VISION:
Celebrating the connection between art, nature, history, politics, and culture
Photographer Joel Sartore talks about taking portraits of 12,000 animals.
A peaceful, environmentally conscious world is good for people and wildlife.
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NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WILDLIFE ART OF THE UNITED STATES
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the
Coeur d’Alene Art Auction Fine Western & American Art
The 2017 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction will be held July 29 in Reno, Nevada.
View select works featured in our 2017 sale and purchase catalogs at www.cdaartauction.com THE COEUR D’ALENE ART AUCTION tel. 208-772-9009 info@cdaartauction.com
Carl Rungius (1869–1959), Out of the Canyon (detail), oil on canvas, 28 × 36 inches, Estimate: $300,000-500,000
TABLE OF CONTENTS 8
54
Letter
from Museum Director Steve Seamons.
60
20 Turning 30!
Meet Maggie Davis, a staff member who started volunteering at the Museum when she was 12, and filmmaker Darrell Miller, who makes ski films when not creating content for the Museum’s YouTube channel. Also read about 30th anniversary events and the latest Museum news.
28 Museum Milestones
How’d we get from a 5,000-square-foot rental space to being the Congressionally designated “National Museum of Wildlife Art of the United States?”
30 Thirty Voices
Artists, leaders, educators, and Museum friends talk about the importance of this institution.
30 66
Richard F. Loffler (Canadian, b. 1956), The Buffalo Trail, 2012. Bronze. 64 x 10 x 10 feet. JKM Collection®, National Museum of Wildlife Art. © Richard Loffler.
72
34 Flashback: Bill & Joffa Kerr
The couple whose collection launched the Museum talks about the early days, the joy of seeing others take over, and why they’re not collecting art themselves anymore.
36 Art is All Around
Make your time in the valley as art-full as possible. Suggestions of where to stay, shop, eat, and even spa.
40 Shop to Support the Museum
The Museum Shop sells wildlife-themed art and objects alongide art books and gorgeous jewelry. (The traditional 30th anniversary gift is a pearl.)
42 The Places They Go
Checking in with former Museum interns Melynda Seaton and Andrew Westover.
44
FEATURES
43 Flashback: Jane Lavino, Curator of Education and Exhibits
54 Sanctuary on the Hill
In her 26 years at the Museum, Lavino has developed an engaging curriculum for students of all ages, and seen former students go into careers in art.
60 A Conversation with Jane Goodall
44 Walk in the Wild
The Museum’s Sculpture Trail was designed with plenty of room to grow. Since it opened five years ago it has. The idea is for it to continue to do so.
46 Behind the Art: Jaguar and Resting Jaguar, Anna Hyatt Huntington
Brought to New York City from Paraguay, the jaguar these two sculptures were based on was named Señor Lopez.
47 Flashback: Joe Bishop, Director of Facility and Security Services
Bishop remembers using vans and U-Hauls to move into the current building in 1994, and talks about his goal to ride a motorcycle 200 miles an hour.
2 2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org
The National Museum of Wildlife Art is a global beacon for the genre. By Todd Wilkinson
48
51
Rungius Award winner Jane Goodall talks about her life. By Irene Rawlings
66 What’s Hanging? 48 Food as Art
Palate opens off Johnston Hall with a menu as interesting as the Museum’s permanent collection and the best outdoor patio in the valley.
50 Get with a Group
Whether planned months in advance or last-minute, the Museum makes a great stop for group tours.
51 Flashback: Married at the Museum
When it came time for one of the most important shows of their lives, the couple behind Jackson’s favorite band, Screen Door Porch, had it at the Museum.
52 Behind the Art: Iridescence Jackson Hole’s favorite naturalist Bert
Raynes talks about this summer’s exhibit “Iridescence: John Gould’s Hummingbirds.”
A look at the first reinstallation of the Museum’s permanent collection since 2005 and this year’s temporary exhibits. By Dina Mishev
72 Shooting Species to Save Them
National Geographic Fellow Joel Sartore has photographed more than 6,500 species of animals for his Photo Ark project. The Museum is one of the first institutions outside National Geographic headquarters to exhibit a selection of Photo Ark images. By Dina Mishev
Call of the Wild is published annually by: The National Museum of Wildlife Art 2820 Rungius Road, Jackson, WY 83001. Published May 2017, Issue 30 Cover: Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark. A three-month-old baby chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) Lowry Park Zoo, Tampa, Florida Clockwise from top: Theodore Gericault (French, 1791 – 1824), Two Lions, after Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1810. Oil on canvas. 25 1/2 x 32 inches. JKM Collection®, National Museum of Wildlife Art. Credit: Michael Neugebauer Joel Sartore. Coquerel’s sifaka (Propithecus coquereli), Houston Zoo, Houston, Texas Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987), Bighorn Ram, 1983. Screenprint. 38 x 38 inches. Gift of the 2006 Collectors Circle and an Anonymous Donor and the NMWA Acquisitions Fund, National Museum of Wildlife Art. © 2017 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York/Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.
2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org 3
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BOARD OF TRUSTEES
National Museum of Wildlife Art staff at the Brinkerhoff Cabin, Grand Teton National Park.
LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR
T
he National Museum of Wildlife Art of the United States celebrates its 30th anniversary on May 16, 2017. Staff, Board Members, and Volunteers of the Museum are filled with enthusiasm as they plan exhibits, events, and programs centered on celebrating the past thirty years while looking forward to our future. Since its inception in 1987, the Museum has been recognized as a leading institution for the collection, interpretation, display, and conservation of some of the finest wildlife artwork found throughout the world. On January 3, 2008 the Museum received national recognition by Congress as the “National Museum of Wildlife Art of the United States.” Congress, in its “Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008,” listed ten findings for its determination, including, “the National Museum of Wildlife Art … is devoted to inspiring global recognition of fine art related to nature and wildlife.” This statement holds true today and is a guiding principle in all Museum efforts. In 2002 the Museum participated in the rigorous process of accreditation with the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). AAM measured the performance of the Museum against the highest professional standards and best practices established as characteristics of excellence. The AAM found the Museum to be worthy of accreditation. Only about 5 percent of museums in the country are AAM accredited. AAM requires that museums review and renew their accreditation status, ensuring continued adherence to these standards and best practices. During this past year, the Museum participated in the reaccreditation process, and the AAM again granted accreditation status. The Museum continues to be committed to these established standards and practices. This year the Museum hosts some of the finest exhibits and events it has produced and curated to date. In June, the Museum exhibits Joel Sartore’s National Geographic “Photo Ark.” The Museum considers it a privilege to partner with National Geographic in hosting this wonderful exhibit, which provides insight into the impact of human interaction with wildlife. On August 19th, the Museum hosts the Black Bear Ball, a celebratory event only held every five years. The Museum continues to strive for excellence providing experiences for individuals to enhance their understanding of humanity’s relationship with wildlife through art. I am honored to be associated with the Museum and to work with the community and dozens of partners that have been, and continue to be, friends to the Museum. I invite each of you to come and join us as we celebrate our 30th anniversary.
Steve Seamons 8 2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org
CHAIRMAN EMERITUS William G. Kerr
TREASURER William R. Scarlett, IV
CHAIRMAN Debbie Petersen
SECRETARY Helen Laughery
VICE CHAIRMAN Bettina Whyte
MUSEUM DIRECTOR Steve Seamons
TRUSTEES Richard Beck Jan Benz Lisa Carlin Barbara Carlsberg Tasso Coin Richard A. Collister Lynn Friess Sue Simpson Gallagher Jim Gersack Robert C. Hummel Mary Jane Hunt Nada Jain Lisa Jennings Kavar Kerr Scott Kirkpatrick Carol Linton Fred W. Lyons, Jr. Adrienne Mars Peggy Mays William A. Mingst Pam Niner Dick O’Leary Peter Safir Charlotte Stifel Caroline Taylor Marcia G. Taylor Georgene Tozzi Suzanne Whitmore
TRUSTEE EMERITI Howell Breedlove Roger Craton Mary Anne Cree Jack Fritz M. Anthony Greene Richard P. Johnston Joffa Kerr Sam Lightner Clarke Nelson Maggie Scarlett Suzanne Young
Presents the
LIFE TRUSTEES Marion Buchenroth Bob Jaycox Bob McCloy Charlie Mechem Gloria Newton Dick Vaughan
FOUNDER OF LEANIN’ TREE, ED TRUMBLE
NATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD Barbara Casey Sophie Craighead Mary Anne Cree Liliane A. Haub Tim Hixon Richard P. Johnston Bill Lively Christine Mollring Bob Peck Nelson Schwab, III John Turner
GENERAL INFORMATION Address: 2820 Rungius Road, Jackson, WY 83001 Located 2.5 miles north of the Jackson Town Square 307-733-5771 | WildlifeArt.org MUSEUM HOURS Open Daily May – October, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. November 2017 – April 2018 Tuesday to Saturday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., Sundays, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Closed Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day OUR MISSION The Mission of the National Museum of Wildlife Art is to collect, display, interpret, and preserve the highest quality North American wildlife art, supplemented by wildlife art found throughout the world. The Museum enriches and inspires appreciation and knowledge of humanity’s relationship with nature.
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PUBLISHER Jennifer Marshall Weydeveld MANAGING EDITOR Dina Mishev ART DIRECTION & DESIGN Creative Curiosity Cristine Wehner, Creative Director | Amy Birch, Designer CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Irene Rawlings, Bert Raynes, Todd Wilkinson ADVERTISING SALES Debbie Phillips PERMISSIONS RESEARCHER Emily Winters
© 2017 National Museum of Wildlife Art of the United States All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be used in violation of any of the copyrights provided under current law including, but not limited to, reproduction or copying in any form or by any means, such as graphic, electronic, or-mechanical, including photocopying, taping, or informational storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission of the National Museum of Wildlife Art. The National Museum of Wildlife Art is an accredited member of the American Association of Museums.
GAYLE BARTLETT Visitors Services Associate JOE BISHOP Director of Facility & Security Services JOCELYN BOSS Director of Philanthropy NATASHA BUNZL Assistant Curator of Education & Exhibits MARGO CASLAVKA Executive Assistant to the Museum Director MARGARET CREEL Development and Campaign Associate MATT COLLETT Security Services MAGGIE DAVIS Supervisor of Group Tours & Visitors Services
CONTRIBUTORS DINA MISHEV, Managing Editor
Julia Vandenoever.
KIM ANDREWS Accounting Associate
A native of Maryland, Dina Mishev moved to Jackson Hole for one year after college; she celebrates her twenty-year anniversary in the valley this summer. Dina’s writing also appears in The Washington Post, Sunset, and Inspirato. Her book, 20 Easy Day Hikes in Jackson Hole was published by Globe Pequot this spring. Her book Roadtrips > Yellowstone, about Yellowstone gateway communities, includes an interview with the Museum’s curator Adam Harris and will be published in January 2018. Dina is also the editor in chief of Jackson Hole magazine, Inspirato, and RANGE-Design & Living in Jackson Hole.
TODD WILKINSON, Contributing Writer For the last thirty years Bozeman-based writer Todd Wilkinson (“Sanctuary on the Hill,” pg. 50) has been a national environmental and art journalist; assignments take him around the world. Todd’s work has appeared in publications from National Geographic and The Washington Post to High Country News, The Christian Science Monitor, Smithsonian, and dozens of others, including art magazines. The Minneapolis native has also authored several critically acclaimed books, including the recent Grizzlies of Pilgrim Creek, An Intimate Portrait of 399, the Most Famous Bear of Greater Yellowstone, which won a 2016 High Plains Book Award. Todd proudly admits to being a giant fan of the National Museum of Wildlife Art and was among the first writers to cover its opening.
ANDRÉE DEAN Assistant Director of Programs & Events AMY GOICOECHEA Director of Programs & Events ADAM DUNCAN HARRIS, PH.D. Petersen Curator of Art & Research CAROLYN HAWXHURST Visitors Services Associate LISA HOLMES Chief Financial Officer JANE LAVINO Sugden Family Curator of Education & Exhibits BOB MARTIN Security Services WENDY MERRICK Manager of Events BRONWYN MINTON Associate Curator of Art & Research
IRENE RAWLINGS, Contributing Writer A longtime contributing writer to Call of the Wild, Irene Rawlings (“A Conversation with Jane Goodall,” pg. 56) writes about art, travel, nature, and adventure for Robb Report, Sunset, Saturday Evening Post, Luxury Magazine, and WSJ. She divides her time between her home in Colorado, a small vineyard in California, and an extremely small windmill in Greece.
ROBERT MULL Security Services MILESSA ORTIZ Membership and Database Associate RAY POLITO Preparator
BERT RAYNES, Contributing Writer Conservationist and author Bert Raynes (“Behind the Art,” pg. 52) cofounded the Jackson Hole Bird Club in 1976 and has been writing for Call of the Wild since 2004. In 1976, he started writing the column “Far Afield” in the Jackson Hole News&Guide (formerly the Jackson Hole News). With his late wife Meg, Raynes founded the Meg and Bert Raynes Wildlife Fund. The fund’s goal is to assist projects and activities that help maintain viable and sustainable wildlife populations into the future, especially in Wyoming and Jackson Hole. Learn more at rayneswildlifefund.org.
CRISTINE WEHNER, Creative Director The curiosity in Creative Curiosity‚ comes directly from founder Cristine Wehner’s focus on finding inspired and tailored design solutions for every design project the firm has worked on over the last 15 years. A mountain girl at heart, Cristine grew up in Colorado, and threw herself wholeheartedly into a design education at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia before settling in Wyoming to do what she loves. In addition to Call of the Wild Cristine has done design work for the Jackson Hole Land Trust, Snake River Sporting Club, and the Grand Teton Music Festival among other clients.
JENNIFER MARSHALL WEYDEVELD, Publisher Jennifer Marshall Weydeveld started her career in the museum field in the 1990s working at the Smithsonian Institution. She went on to work in marketing at the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe and later was director of marketing at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Jennifer also founded The Marshall Plan, a communications firm focused on the arts, tourism, and the environment. She moved to Jackson in 2014 to join the National Museum of Wildlife Art as director of marketing. When Jennifer and her husband Tim aren’t skiing, fishing, camping, or mountain biking around Jackson with their dogs Casper and Togwotee, you can find them at Ram’s Horn Ranch in Dubois, which Tim’s family homesteaded in 1947. 10 2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org
DEBBIE PHILLIPS Marketing Coordinator FALLON RYAN Development Coordinator STEVE SEAMONS Museum Director LISA SIMMONS Assistant Curator of Education & Exhibits: Youth and Adult Education VICTOR TZOMPA-HERNANDEZ Custodial & Maintenance ERNESTO TZOMPA-HERNANDEZ Custodial & Maintenance DEBBIE VASSAR Manager of Retail Operations MARC WEIMAR Security Services EMILY WINTERS Registrar TAYLOR WOODS Marketing Manager
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THE CENTER 2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org 19
TURNING 30
The Face of the Front Desk
Meet Sally Byrne, Volunteer of the Year
Meet Maggie Davis, supervisor of group tours and visitor services, and the woman behind the big smile at the museum’s front desk.
M
aggie Davis has spent more than half of her life volunteering or working at the National Museum of Wildlife Art. The 2004 graduate of Jackson Hole High School started volunteering at the Museum in 1998; she was in 6th grade. “You had to do something when you were 12, and you can’t work yet,” she says. “I’ve always understood that volunteer work was important.” Davis and some of her friends were among the Museum’s first Junior Volunteers and helped out four hours a week, working at the front desk, or doing upkeep in the Children’s Discovery Gallery. Even when Davis was old enough to get a job—at 14 she started working at Lee’s Tees—she continued to volunteer at the Museum. When Davis’ junior year in high school rolled around, “I was trying to figure out what I wanted to study in college,” she says. She got an internship with the Museum’s marketing department. Davis went on to get her degree from Carroll College in Helena, Montana in communications studies and public relations. During college, over summers and when home on semester breaks, she worked at the Museum. And then, in early 2008, mid-way through her senior year at Carroll, the Museum offered Davis a full-time job to start after she graduated. “They didn’t really tell me what I would be doing,” she says. “But it didn’t matter so much. The Museum is such a special place.” After she graduated, Davis started working on the Museum’s biggest annual fundraiser, Western Visions®. She then became an administrative assistant. In 2009, she took over working with tour groups and in 2011 she was named to her current role.
Maggie on Andy Warhol: In 2006 when we first acquired Andy Warhol’s Endangered Species, it was so awesome. I thought the works were so captivating. At the time we had an invitation made for our members that had the portfolio printed on it. I had it framed and it is up in my house. When I heard we were bringing them back out for the 30th, I could not have been more excited.
C. 2500 B.C. The time period from which the oldest piece in the Museum’s collection, a set of carved stone animals called Birdstones, dates Southern Michigan and Northern Indiana Tribes, Birdstone, c. 2500 BC. Granite. 2 ¾ x 4 ½ x 1 3/8 inches. JKM Collection®, National Museum of Wildlife Art.
20 2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org
Maynard Dixon (American, 1875 – 1946), Eagle’s Roost, 1927-46. Oil on canvas board. 30 x 25 inches. JKM Collection®, National Museum of Wildlife Art. ©Estate of Maynard Dixon.
5,004
A THREE-HOUR TOUR
H
aving literally grown up at the National Museum of Wildlife Art—she started volunteering when she was 12 and accepted a permanent position after graduating from college in 2008— Maggie Davis knows how to make the most of a visit to the Museum. Here she shares her tips. • Come in the morning. It’s slower then. Also, during the summer, we’re open on Mondays and they’re traditionally slower. • Make a whole morning out of it: come in around 10, go through the Museum, check out the Museum Shop, have an early lunch, and then go back through the galleries. Hit the Sculpture Trail before you leave. You can do all of this in a three-hour window. • Get a docent led tour. It’s only $25 and the docents are so knowledgeable and love the Museum. The average docent has been leading tours here for about five years. • Walk the Sculpture Trail—it adds a whole other dimension to the Museum.
S
ally and her husband Jim moved to Jackson Hole full-time in 2001 and both jumped right into volunteering in the community. “I’ve always been an active community volunteer,” Sally says. “I knew I wanted to give some of my time to the Museum. I’ve always had a passion for art.” (She does paint herself—“primarily landscape right now—there are so many opportunities for that around here,” she says.) Sally says of the 16 years she has volunteered for the Museum, “it’s pretty selfish actually. I love to go up to the Museum—it is wonderful to be surrounded by such beautiful work and such talented artists.” Sally has also used her time at the Museum to learn more about wildlife art. “I had visited the Museum before we moved here and was quite impressed by the collection, but didn’t know much about the genre of wildlife art at the time,” she says. “It’s been exciting to grow my appreciation of it. The Museum has so many educational opportunities. Favorite artwork: This is a hard one. I like American Black Bear in the Rungius Gallery a lot. But I’ve got too many favorites. I’m particularly drawn to artists like Ken Carlson. And Robert Bateman is a favorite. Sandy Scott is so multi-talented. Also, I think when you know the artists—like locals Bill Sawczuk and Kathy Turner—you appreciate their work that much more. Goals when showing visitors the collection: I like to help visitors appreciate the dynamic art community we have in Jackson and to help people appreciate the fact the Museum is unique for not only specializing in wildlife art, but also for its location where live wildlife can be observed and celebrated on a daily basis. I like sharing backstories of works too. That always adds to a visitor’s experience.
Favorite backstory: American Black Bear hung above the fireplace in the great room of Jackson Lake Lodge for years on loan from the Rockefellers. The family had quite a collection of Rungius work it loaned the lodge. When this collection was dispersed, half went to what is now the Buffalo Bill Center for the West and half came to the National Museum of Wildlife Art. The way these pieces were dispersed is that one museum picked a piece, and then the other museum picked a piece, until they were all gone. American Black Bear, because it had hung above the fireplace, was covered in soot and grime and wasn’t as attractive as many of the other pieces. It wasn’t picked early on. It wasn’t until the Museum had it restored that anyone appreciated the vibrant colors and the masterpiece that it is.
The number of hours volunteers donated to the museum in 2016
125
The number of 40-hour workweeks 2016’s volunteer hours are equivalent to
40
The number of hours of training required to become a museum docent
Tim Shinabarger (American, b. 1966), Black Timber Bugler, sculpted 2006, cast 2007. Bronze. 112 1/2 x 64 5/8 x 116 inches. Gift of Joy and Tony Greene, National Museum of Wildlife Art. © Tim Shinabarger. Photograph by Taylor Woods
2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org 21
TURNING 30
Make it a Date June 17
August 19
Over its five-year history the Museum’s Plein Air Fest, Etc. has raised more than $200,000 to support the Museum’s mission. This year’s event, the sixth annual, is June 17. Plein air pieces by more than fifty participating artists, including Jackson Hole-based artists Kay Stratman, Katy Fox, Peggy Prugh, Bill Sawczuk, and Anika Youcha, among others, will be auctioned off starting at 1:30. Prior to the auction, visitors can watch artists working on the Sculpture Trail starting at 10 a.m. wildlifeart.org/events/plein-air-fest-etc
The Museum celebrates its birthday with a magnificent gala every five years. August 19 is the fourth Black Bear Ball, which honors the museum’s 30th anniversary. For the first time, the Ball, where men often pair tuxedos with fancy bolos and women wear formal gowns with fringe, is outside under a tent. “We live in the most beautiful place in the U.S. day or night,” say event co-chairs Jan Benz and Bettina Whyte. “Moving the event outside where we can start with cocktails on the Sculpture Trail before enjoying a seated dinner by Palate’s talented chefs seems perfect. We’ll then dance the night away to Whiskey Mornin’.” It’s unlikely any of the elk or coyotes sometimes seen around this edge of the property will show up, but the setting under the stars and overlooking the National Elk Refuge and Sleeping Indian is wild enough.
Painting on the Sculpture Trail
Black Bear Ball
For more information visit wildlifeart.org/events
15(ISH)
The number of artists with work in the permanent collection who live part- or full-time in Jackson Hole
Courtesy of Cristine Wehner
10%-20%
Whiskey Mornin’
How much of the permanent collection is on display at any given time
Charles M. Russell (American, 1864-1926), The Bluffers, 1924. Bronze. 7 5/8 x 18 x 9 inches. JKM Collection®, National Museum of Wildlife Art. 22 2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org
2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org 23
TURNING 30
September 6-15
Western Visions® Annual Show & Sale The Museum’s largest annual fundraiser is as old as the Museum itself. The first invitationonly Western Visions® Show & Sale was held in 1987. To celebrate its and the Museum’s 30th anniversaries, the 2017 Western Visions® is unlike any prior event. This year, only artists with work in the Museum’s permanent collection were invited to participate. There are about 150 living artists with work in the permanent collection. More than one hundred are creating work for Western Visions®. Amy Goicoechea, the Museum’s director of programs and events says, “I think we’re going to have a more varied show than in the past, and we’re going to be celebrating our fabulous collection in a very contemporary way. We might have collected an artist’s work 20 or 25 years ago, and now we’re going to be exhibiting something new.” Goicoechea says several of this year’s Western Visions® artists have been involved in the event since the beginning and others are participating for the first time. Prior to the event’s two biggest nights, the Artist Party (September 14) and the Show & Sale (September 15), are other events including the Jewelry & Artisan Luncheon at the Four Seasons Resort Jackson Hole (September 6). For details and tickets, go to wildlifeart.org/western-visions. ■
Clockwise from Far Left: Gwynn Murrill, Mountain Sheep Maquette Stand. Bronze on steel base. 68 x 12 x 12 inches. George Bumann, The White Lady. Bronze.18.25 x 23 x 5.5 inches. Leo Osborne, Winter’s Embrace. Maple burlwood on tree limb. 6 x 8 x 17 inches. Clyde Aspevig, Time Traveler. Oil on linen. 24 x 30 inches. Jack Balas, Mountain Lake. Oil on canvas. 24 x 32 inches.
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2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org 25
TURNING 30 Left: Juan Fontanive (American, b. 1977), Ornithology P, 2014. 5 ¼ x 4 ¼ x 4 inches. Gift of the 2017 Blacktail Gala, National Museum of Wildlife Art. © Juan Fontanive.
The Man Behind The Museum’s Movies
W
ildlife art and skiing have filmmaker Darrell Miller in common. Miller is known around Jackson Hole for the feature-length films starring locals he makes of each ski season—his 17th will come out at the end of 2017— and, since 2008 he’s collaborated with the National Museum of Wildlife Art to produce almost forty videos. (Many are up on the Museum’s YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/user/ WildlifeArtMuseum.) We got Miller, who’s usually the one asking the questions, to answer a couple.
Below Left: Rembrandt Bugatti (Italian, 1885 – 1916), Eland, 1910. Bronze. 19 1/2 x 21 1/2 x 10 inches. JKM Collection®, National Museum of Wildlife Art.
COTW: Are artists or skiers more difficult to work with? DM: Definitely skiers.
Below Right: Kent Ullberg (Swedish, b. 1945), Ring of Bright Water II, c. 1990. Bronze. 41 x 24 x 14.5 inches. JKM Collection®, National Museum of Wildlife Art. © Kent Ullberg.
COTW: Which of your videos for the Museum stand out in your mind? DM: Probably the Richard Loffler one. I was going up to his studio in Montana filming the steps of making the massive bronze statues for The Buffalo Trail. It was a 12-, 13-, 14-month process. It was incredible to see how it all happened. Check out the Museum's YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/user/WildlifeArtMuseum
Blacktail Gala I
“
t keeps getting better and better,” says Meagan Murtagh, the editor of The Scout Guide JH, of the Blacktail Gala. She should know, as she’s been to the event since its inception in 2014. This year the gala resulted in seven new pieces—a record—of contemporary wildlife art being added to the Museum’s permanent collection. This year’s gala, which was February 11, set another record: tickets sold out more than five weeks in advance. “The unique approach allowing guests to vote in artwork makes the night so much fun,” Murtagh says. “My favorite part, of course, is getting fancy! The Scout Guide was honored to be a sponsor on behalf of all of our members.” Modeled on the Museum’s Collector’s Circle Dinner, the Blacktail Gala combines dinner with decisions for 145 guests. It is during dinner that tables vote on artworks they’d like to see added to the Museum’s permanent collection. Before voting on works, guests have the chance to look at each piece selected for possible inclusion in the permanent collection by the
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curatorial department and collections committee. (This year, guests had 12 pieces to vote on.) Bronwyn Minton, the Museum’s associate curator of art and research, also spoke about each work and artist. And then over braised pork shank by Palate executive chef Clark Myers, it was time to vote. Gala attendees voted seven works into the Museum’s permanent collection: Marc Petrovic’s hot sculpted glass and murrini piece, “Avian Pair;” Juan Fontanive’s “Ornithology” and “Colorthing;” Shelley Reed’s “Stag (after Landseer);” Zoe Keller’s graphite and paper works “Fire” and “Prey;” and Belgian artist William Sweetlove’s “Cloned Penguin with Petbottle.” Sweetlove’s work is a set of six resin penguins, each a different color and carrying a water bottle on its back. The work is a call for greater ecological awareness; the water bottles are meant to draw attention to the fact the planet is running out of drinking water. The 2018 Blacktail Gala is in February. Tickets will go on sale in January.
220
The approximate number of pieces in the Museum’s permanent collection in 1987
The Best Birthday Present Showing it doesn’t rest on its laurels, the Museum this year received reaccreditation by the American Alliance of Museums.
L 4,900
The approximate number of pieces in the Museum’s permanent collection in 2017
153
The average number of items the Museum annually adds to its permanent collection
ess than 3 percent of the country’s estimated 35,000 museums are accredited by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). In 2002 the National Museum of Wildlife Art was accredited, joining institutions like New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California. To ensure accredited museums continue to meet the AAM’s high standards for best practices, they must periodically undergo a reaccreditation process, which is almost as rigorous as the initial process. The Museum
started its reaccreditation process last year and, this February, was notified it had received reaccreditation. “Accreditation means so much in terms of our place in the greater museum world,” says the Museum’s Petersen curator of art and research Adam Duncan Harris. “When we ask another institution to borrow a work of art or book an exhibit, having the accreditation is like a stamp of approval. For visitors, it means they are sure to have a quality experience and know that they are visiting a place that prides itself on top-notch service.” ■
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CELEBRATING 30 YEARS 1993
2011
Ground is broken on East Gros Ventre Butte for a new 51,000-square-foot museum building. Denver-based C.W. Fentress, J.H. Bradburn and Associates’ design was inspired by the ruins of 16th century Slains Castle in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
The 400-some tons of Arizona sandstone that covered the Museum’s exterior walls since 1994 are replaced with stone from closer to home, Oakley Quartzite, which was mined in Idaho. The new façade is a near match with the natural rock on East Gros Ventre Butte.
2015 Artist Ai Wei Wei’s Zodiac Heads, a series of 12 sculptures representing the Chinese zodiac, is exhibited on the Museum’s Sculpture Trail.
1987 Wildlife of the American West Art Museum opens in a 5,000-square-foot space opposite the northeast corner of Jackson’s Town Square. Susan Simpson Gallagher, today a Museum board member and a fine art gallery owner in Cody, Wyoming, is hired as the first curator.
2001 For the first time in its history, two Rungius medals are awarded in the same year, to primate researcher Jane Goodall and Jackson Hole naturalist, bird watcher, and author Bertram C. “Bert” Raynes. (Read more about Jane on pg. 60 and read an article by Bert on page 52.)
1985 Ten founding trustees chose Jackson Hole as the setting for an art museum dedicated to images of wildlife.
1985
1990 Museum Trustees begin study for a new and permanent location. Dr. B. Byron Price advises to leave downtown for a convenient destination setting.
The first Western Visions ® Miniature Show & Sale is held.
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1988 The Rungius Medal, the Museum’s highest honor, is established by Laurance S. Rockefeller and Peter A.B. Widener to recognize individuals who have made extraordinary lifetime contributions to the artistic interpretation and preservation of wildlife and western history. Illustrator and painter John Clymer is the first Rungius Medal honoree. (See a list of all Rungius Medal winners at wildlifeart.org/about/medalsand-awards/rungius-award.)
2001 2002 2006
The Museum’s Petersen curator of art and research Dr. Adam Duncan Harris wins the Wyoming Governor’s Art Award.
The museum wins Western Heritage Literary Awards from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum for Bob Kuhn: Drawing on Instinct and for National Geographic Greatest Photographs of the American West.
The Museum establishes the annual Bull-Bransom Award, sponsored by Lynn and Foster Friess to recognize excellence in the field of children’s book illustrations focusing on wildlife and nature.
2007 2008 2009
2016
2012
2010
Joffa and Bill Kerr awarded Wyoming Governor’s Arts Award.
2000
Western Visions ® Annual Show & Sale has grown from a miniature show to a month-long exhibit featuring the world’s best living artists specializing in wildlife and nature.
Congress approves bill S.2739 and President George W. Bush signs it, officially recognizing the Museum as the National Museum of Wildlife Art of the United States.
1997
1985 1987 1988 1990 1 993 1994 1997
1987
2014
2008
2010
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
2017
2009 1994 Staff moves the Museum’s permanent collection to the new building, which opens in September with a new name: National Museum of Wildlife Art. The collection now includes about 1,000 pieces.
University of Oklahoma Press publishes Wildlife in American Art: Masterworks from the National Museum of Wildlife Art by Dr. Adam Duncan Harris.
2002 The Museum receives official accreditation from the American Association of Museums, which less than 10 percent of museums in the country attain. Additionally, the Museum is bestowed the Wyoming Governor’s Arts Award.
2012 2007
2006 Andy Warhol’s Endangered Species portfolio is added to the Museum’s permanent collection. (Read more on pg. 66.)
2013
Bart Walter’s Wapiti Trail, a life-size sculpture of five elk, is unveiled at the Museum’s entrance.
Bart Walter (American, b. 1958), Wapiti Trail, modeled 2005; cast 2007. Bronze. Purchased with funds generously donated by an anonymous benefactor, National Museum of Wildlife Art. © Bart Walter
The three-quarter mile Sculpture Trail honoring the memory of James Petersen and designed by landscape architect Walter Hood opens with pieces including British artist Simon Gudgeon’s Isis, Sandy Scott’s Presidential Eagle, and Buffalo Trail, a 64-foot-long grouping of seven American bison by Richard Loffler.
“George Catlin’s American Buffalo,” organized by the National Museum of Wildlife Art and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, debuts at the Museum before traveling to seven other museums across the country.
2017 Under new director Steve Seamons, the Museum achieves reaccreditation from the American Alliance of Museums.
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30
VOICES
New and old friends of the Museum share what makes it special. Interviews by Jennifer Weydeveld
1. CLARENE LAW, Town Squares Inn, Community Focus Committee Member, and Former Trustee. The Museum reflects the best in all of us. It provides an opportunity to mingle and participate in the essence of Jackson Hole—the magic of its wildlife and its rich history. 2. EWOUD DE GROOT, Western Visions® Artist, People’s Choice Award Winner (2014) The Museum is a gem where nature and culture meet and give depth to the Greater Yellowstone area. It’s important on an international level because of its scale and professionalism. 3. MICHAEL LANGE, Executive Director, Wyoming Arts Council The National Museum of Wildlife Arts represents one of the cornerstone arts organizations in the state. The Museum’s staff are leaders in the field, giving the Museum the ability to serve as mentors for smaller organizations. 4. DONNA HOWELL-SICKLES, Artist The vibrant landscape and abundant wildlife in [Jackson Hole] is so unlike anywhere else it can be totally overwhelming. The Museum uses art to break things into pieces so that awe can be translated into an emotional and personal experience. It helps visitors make connections and build stories inside those stunning visual memories that will enrich and endure for years to come. 5. LISA CARLIN, Trustee Visitors to the Museum see how artists interpret the animals of our area—whether in a realistic or contemporary form or through painting or sculpture. 6. DIANE SHOBER, Executive Director, Wyoming Office of Tourism While the Museum showcases wildlife art, there are also exquisite and unexpected exhibits that beautifully reflect Wyoming and our vast landscapes, both epic and intimate. 7. BEN ROTH, Artist, Community Focus Committee Member As a guest artist, I did a snow stencil project with kids. We laid animal stencils on the snow and sprinkled dirt and wild flowers on top. 8. ALEX KLEIN, Vice President and General Manager, Grand Teton Lodge Company and Flagg Ranch Company The Museum is home to at least three Rungius pieces that once were owned by the Rockefellers and displayed at Jackson Lake Lodge. It’s great there’s a facility like the Museum here that can preserve and care for these important pieces while keeping them close to where they once hung. 9. MAUREEN MURPHY, Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce The Museum is one of the cornerstones of culture in our unique community. It showcases so many amazing wildlife works and is such a wonderful presence to our north entrance to town. What a fabulous place as a local or a visitor to be able to visit.
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10. CARRIE GERACI, Director, Jackson Hole Public Art Program I took my two boys to see Ai Weiwei’s film outdoors when his Animal Zodiac was on the Sculpture Trail. A full moon rose behind Sleeping Indian and my sons were enthralled by [Ai Weiwei’s] struggle and the power of his voice as an artist. 11. JUDY SINGLETON, J Singleton Financial The Museum’s National Geographic photography exhibit was incredible, and a walk down memory lane for my siblings and me. We grew up in a house where National Geographic magazine was one of our monthly highlights, pouring through each issue, page by page. We each purchased Greatest Photographs of the American West in the Museum Shop and the conversations it stirred lasted the rest of their visit. 12. LYNN FRIESS, Trustee The Museum is the only museum in the United States of America that celebrates wildlife art. How special is that? 13. DESMOND JENNINGS, RE/MAX Obsidian Real Estate Co Thanks to the Museum, I’ve made many lasting friendships and have a place I look forward to sharing with friends, family, and clients when they come to visit Jackson Hole. 14. ALISON JONES, Volunteer It offers an outstanding collection of fine art that enhances the experience of viewing wildlife in its natural habitat. More importantly, it inspires painters, sculptors, and photographers to create their own expressions, and instills values that serve to perpetuate the tradition of preservation of lands and the protection of wildlife. 15. MATT MEAD, Wyoming Governor You can’t help but be blown away when you walk into the Museum and see the artwork. I get enthused when I see the enthusiasm of other visitors. I hope we can all take a great amount of pride that the National Museum of Wildlife Art is here in Wyoming, and in the absolute perfect spot.
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30 CONTINUED....
VOICES
16. HARVEY LOCKE, FOUNDER, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative I approached the Museum many years ago to work on a project that is one of the most fun collaborations I’ve done. “Yellowstone to Yukon: The Journey of Wildlife Art,” was an exhibition in 2011. 17 MARK BARRON, Former Mayor of Jackson The ability to see up close the panoramas, mountains, and wildlife as captured by a western artist—to take one’s time and visually explore the experience on canvas, is a powerful thing. 18. GILLIAN CHAPMAN, ED.D., Superintendent, Teton County School District At a time when many people live in urban areas and are disconnected from the out-of-doors, the drive up the hill takes visitors to another time and space where art is admired, shared, and an extension of the natural world. 19. KATHRYN TURNER, Artist When I was in high school, I took a field trip to the Museum and sketched the sculpture, Great Northern by Sherry Salari-Sander. Later I did a watercolor painting of my sketch. Bill Kerr bought it for the Museum’s collection. What an invaluable vote of confidence! 20. MARK NOWLIN, Director, Art Association of Jackson Hole By presenting world class wildlife art, the Museum validates historical and future efforts to preserve habitat and protect wildlife for our children. 21. LYNDSAY ROWAN MCCANDLESS, Executive Director, Center of Wonder The Museum lets visitors to Jackson slow down and learn about and experience wildlife through the eyes and hands of amazing artists. It inspires us to be more curious and to expand our imaginations. 22. PONTEIR SACKREY, Center for the Arts It was an honor to be a Museum staff member for a cumulative 12 years. My life and the lives of my children have been positively influenced by this fortunate affiliation, a gift that continues to resonate for us today. 23. FIO LAZARTE, Teton Literacy Center The Museum opens door for our students, who are aware of some of the area animals, but, thanks to the Museum, are able to explore more and different wildlife. 24. LISA JENNINGS, Trustee The Running Wild-Dick Jennings Memorial honors my late husband, who loved the artwork at the Museum, and brings our community together outside on the Sculpture Trail.
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25. JENNIFER LOVE, Regular at Fables, Feathers, and Fur with son Cabe; Café Genevieve Server Our favorite visits include magical journeys following animal tracks to a selected work of art where we then read a book that coincides with the art piece in front of us! 26. DICK BECK, Trustee One of the things that’s so “natural” about the fit between the Museum and Jackson is that the Museum celebrates in expressive form the diverse wildlife of this area, giving visitors an opportunity to connect the art and the animals in real time. 27. STEPHANIE BRENNAN, Former Trustee The beauty of the Museum is a reflection of the beauty in this valley. It is a place where you can see a human connection to nature both inside and out. 28. DAVID VELA, Superintendent, Grand Teton National Park Through its paintings, art, and exhibits, the Museum reflects the best of the human spirit. Works of art here capture the very essence of our natural world. 29. BEVERLY SMITH, Trout Unlimited When I visit a new place, I try to uncover that one spot that reveals a glimpse into the heart and soul of a community. For Jackson, that place is the Museum—the spirit of this area is its wildlife. 30. MAGGIE SCARLETT, Trustee Emerita A national museum designation signifies something uniquely special. Because of the efforts of the Wyoming Congressional Delegation and Museum trustees and staff, this Museum was designated the “National Museum of Wildlife Art of the United States.”
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JOFFA & BILL KERR It was a dedicated group of art lovers that founded the Museum, but it was the private art collection (made public) of the Kerrs hanging on the walls.
B
ill Kerr is known and loved for the poetic references he often makes. When writer Todd Wilkinson, who has written about the Museum since it opened, asked him about the Museum’s evolution, he shared two lines from a John Dryden poem penned in the 17th century: “By viewing Nature, and Nature’s handmaid, art; Makes mighty things from small
beginnings grow.” Kerr then elaborated: “England’s first poet laureate encapsulates for me the ineffable relationship between humans, who are really pilgrims in the natural world, and the art that draws them near and mirrors their values. The Museum is just a practical expression of humankind’s interpretation and understanding of nature. The artists in the museum collection all, in their own way, express a timeless devotion to nature.”
As a couple you’ve been collecting art for over fifty years. Are you still collecting? JOFFA: I hope not! Everything is full. BILL: I’m under “house arrest,” as in I don’t even think about it. To the outside world, there are some milestones it’s easy to use to judge the Museum’s growth in stature—Congress’ designation of it as the National Museum of Wildlife Art of the United States; its accreditation by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). What do you see as milestones? BILL: Being able to open with a show from the Gilcrease Museum, which is the Smithsonian of the West, really started the Museum with some credibility. The next summer [1988] the National Cowboy Museum sent us their Prix de West collection, which was, and still is, the premiere contemporary western art collection in the country. Also that summer, three dozen watercolors Thomas Moran executed in Yellowstone circa 1871 were on display from Gilcrease. 1988 was the year of the Yellowstone fires and we were just down the road with a unique collection. There is no substitute for being lucky. So that takes care of the first two years, what about later milestones? BILL: The move to the new building was huge. But “huge” is a really poor adjective these days. JOFFA: Important. The move was important. And yes, the congressional designation
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and our accreditation by the AAM. We were accredited before the National Cowboy Museum was accredited. It wasn’t something they had focused on, but we discovered in seeking grants from corporations and foundations the first thing they asked was whether we were accredited. How does a museum go about getting on the U.S. Senate’s radar to be designated “of the United States?” JOFFA: Maggie [Scarlett] was responsible for that. It was shepherded by Dr. Lynne Cheney and Senator David Boren from Oklahoma, a friend of 50 years. The two of you are often credited as the “founders” of the Museum. Is that what you consider yourselves? BILL: I think as much as anybody, the idea of starting a “museum” in Jackson was Maggie and Dick Scarlett’s. They owned Jackson State Bank and had purchased quality art for display including paintings and sculpture with wildlife subjects. Do you know where the Scarletts got the idea? BILL: Maggie and Dick were down in Denver and staying at the Brown Palace Hotel. William Foxley, a western art collector we had met at art shows, came to our home, saw our collection, and asked if we would loan him some things to show in his private Denver museum. We sent probably three
dozen paintings and sculptures to Denver. The museum was right across the street from the Brown Palace. Maggie and Dick saw the art and put two and two together. That started the conversation between the four of us. The Museum’s permanent collection has grown from about 220 pieces in 1987 to more than 5,000 catalogued items, and there’s now about 65,000 annual visitors. To what do you attribute this success? JOFFA: A large group of people who were, and are, smart and loved art took it on as their project, and we were fortunate to get off to a good start with a staff of five people. BILL: After a few years in the new building, other wildlife art collectors began gifting or loaning their works to the museum. That is a terrific seal of approval. Joffa, you’re an artist yourself. How did your involvement with the Museum affect your work? It made it better, with some exceptions. You have to have a pretty thick skin; sometimes you draw criticism from other artists, which is always painful, and it is also the best thing that ever happens to you—to get some real critique. I had a lot of opportunities that some artists don’t have. What was your life in Jackson like before the Museum? JOFFA: Bill had a meeting consecutive summers at Jackson Lake Lodge, in 1975 and 1976. When the meeting broke up,
we went hiking. I think we hiked every trail on the Teton side and loved it. We totally fell in love with the place. That was very unusual for us. We kept coming back and finally asked each other if we wanted to live here. BILL: Joffa was subscribing to the Jackson Hole Guide and once a week it would come in the mail to Norman, Oklahoma. She saw a real estate ad and just on the spur of the moment picked up the phone and called. “If you can find us the right kind of cabin in Wilson, we might be interested.” The guy called back sixty or ninety days later. Had he found you the right kind of cabin? JOFFA: We lived in it for thirty years and it was heaven. We had lots of friends over and lots of animals and wonderful views and we were blessed. But we finally admitted quietly to ourselves that maybe we were getting old and weren’t up to the tasks the cabin required, so we sold it and I just really miss it. Do you look at the Museum as a home at all? BILL: It’s a home as far as the memories and friendships we made there. ■
Carl Rungius (American, b. Germany, 1869 – 1959), First Snow, c. 1940. Oil on canvas. 30 ¼ x 36 ¼ inches. JKM Collection®, National Museum of Wildlife Art. © Estate of Carl Rungius.
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ART-FULL TRAVEL As much as you might want to, you can’t spend your entire time in Jackson Hole at the
National Museum of Wildlife Art. Meet some local businesses that are friends to the Museum and can help you make the most of your time in the valley.
STAY THE WORT
FOUR SEASONS RESORT JACKSON HOLE
TOWN SQUARE INNS
THE ANVIL
Jackson’s only National Historic Hotel of America, The Wort (pronounced “Wirt” in proper Jacksonese) opened in 1941 when downtown’s streets were still dirt. The dirt is long gone, but little else has changed on the hotel’s exterior, including the red rock trim the Wort brothers quarried themselves in the Gros Ventre (Jacksonese: “Gro Vont”) Mountains bounding the east side of Jackson Hole. The interior is another story though: Fili D’oro linens, a permanent art collection with about one hundred original pieces by western and wildlife artists, and double pillow-top mattresses are modern additions. 50 N. Glenwood St., Jackson, 307-733-2190, worthotel.com
The Four Seasons Resort Jackson Hole is elegantly understated: natural woods, copper, and stone create a comfy, contemporary western character. Also, the property likely has the valley’s best public art collection outside of the Museum. “They have some great avian prints by Francois-Nicolas Martinet, a prolific bird artist of the late 1700s,” says the Museum’s Petersen curator of art and research Adam Harris. The collection “combines an urban sensibility with visitors’ obvious expectations for art about nature, resulting in an eclectic blend that surprises as it satisfies. So you get New York street scenes by Reginald Marsh on the one hand and a massive painting of cranes called Jackson Hole Fly Away by Tom Swanston on the other.” From the hotel’s concierge grab an iPod pre-loaded with an audio tour of the collection to hear Harris talk about the property’s art in greater depth. 7680 Granite Rd, Teton Village, 307-732-5000, fourseasons.com/jacksonhole
National Museum of Wildlife Art Community Focus member and former Board member (and a seven-term representative in Wyoming’s House of Representatives) Clarene Law bought the Antler Motel in 1962. Since then, she and her family have expanded to own four properties: the 49er Inn & Suites, Cowboy Village Resort, Antler Inn, and Elk Country Inn. Together they are the Town Square Inns. All are within walking distance of the Town Square. “The quality of lifestyle for our Wyoming residents as well as our visitors is very important to me,” Law said upon her appointment to the Museum’s board in 2005. “And the National Museum of Wildlife Art directly contributes to that. I see the excitement of the visitor as they take advantage of the opportunity to see world-class collections. Art is an experience and the National Museum of Wildlife Art gives exciting access to that experience in Jackson Hole.” Jackson, 800-4TETONS, townsquareinns.com
If you stay at the newly renovated/redesigned Anvil Hotel, you’re only a couple of blocks from the Town Square and you’re supporting the National Museum of Wildlife Art. Book a stay at the 49-room Anvil and enter the code “WILDLIFE ” at check out, and the hotel will donate 20 percent of your stay to the Museum. As much as we love this, that’s not actually our favorite thing about the Anvil these days. Thanks to its update, this former 1950s motel is town’s hippest lodging. Brooklyn-based Studio Tack did the interiors, including custom metal beds in each room. 215 N. Cache St., Jackson, 800-234-4507, anvilhotel.com
ADDITIONAL LODGING OPTIONS THE RUSTY PARROT LODGE 175 N. Jackson St. 307-733-4455 rustyparrot.com
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HOMEWOOD SUITES BY HILTON JACKSON
260 N. Millward St. 307-739-0808 homewoodsuites3.hilton.com
INN ON THE CREEK 295 N. Millward St. 307-739-1565 innonthecreek.com
THE LEXINGTON AT JACKSON HOLE 285 N. Cache St. 307-733-2648 lexingtonhoteljacksonhole.com
SPRINGHILL SUITES BY MARRIOTT JACKSON HOLE 130 W. Simpson St. 307-201-5320 marriott.com
GRAND TETON LODGE COMPANY Grand Teton National Park 307-543-2811 gtlc.com
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COLLECT Earlier this year Diehl Gallery had an exhibition by Canadian painter Anastasia Kimmett, “An Impression of Trees.” The gallery also represents artist Richard Painter. If you arrived in Jackson Hole by plane, there’s no way you missed his piece Final View. Made of charred wood and pastel, the work is 5’ x 30’ and hangs in the Jackson Hole Airport’s main terminal. The gallery represents several artists whose work is included in the Museum’s permanent collection: Gwynn Murrill, JenMarie Zeleznak, Claire Brewster, Susan Goldsmith, and Kollabs. 155 W. Broadway, Jackson, 307-733-0905, diehlgallery.com Heather James Fine Art features work by American artists including Albert Bierstadt, Norman Rockwell, and Grandma Moses alongside Impressionist painters like Monet and Van Gogh. Also found here are Modern/ Post-War notables Calder and Warhol, plus you can view contemporary artists like Hirst and Koons. 172 Center St., Jackson, 307-200-6090, heatherjames.com When Trailside Galleries opened on Jackson’s Town Square in the early 1960s, it was the first art gallery in the area. Today it has branches here and in Scottsdale, includes many of the country’s most prominent western and wildlife artists on its roster, and co-organizes the annual Jackson Hole Art Auction with Santa Fe’s Gerald Peters Gallery. 130 E. Broadway Ave., Jackson, 307-733-3186, trailsidegalleries.com While the Museum celebrates its 30th Anniversary this year, Legacy Gallery celebrates theirs next year. Jinger and Brad Richardson opened Legacy in Jackson in 1988 and today they have satellite galleries in Scottsdale, Arizona and Bozeman, Montana and represent numerous artists with work in the Museum’s permanent collection. If you like the sculpture Great Northern by artist Tim Shinabarger on the Museum’s Sculpture Trail, thank Legacy when you stop in. They gifted it to the Museum last year. 75 N. Cache Jackson, 307-733-2353, legacygallery.com
The Body Sage
SHOP Did the several pieces by Pearls By Shari in the Museum Shop catch your attention? Shari has a storefront just off the Town Square where hundreds of designs are on display (and for sale). 90 E. Broadway Ave., 307-734-0553, Jackson, pearlsbyshari.com
EAT
While Jackson Hole has seen a surge in stylish shops, it still has classic too. Meet Hungry Jack’s General Store. Across from Nora’s in “downtown” Wilson (don’t blink or you’ll miss it), it sells everything but the kitchen sink. Hungry Jack’s probably sells that too; it’s just buried in a happy jumble of kitschy belt buckles, ostrich cowboy boots, Carhartts, and locally made truffles. 5655 W. Highway 22 , Wilson, 307-733-3561
At The Silver Dollar Bar & Grill there’s live Country, Bluegrass, or Americana music from 7:30 to 11:00 p.m. every Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday. Hungry? Enjoy a grilled game pizza in the bar or wander across the hall to the Grill where the fare—but not the dress code—is a little fancier. 50 N. Glenwood St., Jackson, 307-732-3939, worthotel.com Since the Museum’s new restaurant Palate isn’t open for dinner, head to its sister restaurant in downtown Jackson, Gather. A couple of blocks from the Town Square, Gather opened in December 2014 and its food is just as artful as the dishes at Palate. 72 S. Glenwood St., Jackson, 307-264-1820, gatherjh.com
RECOVER All of the treatments at Rusty Parrot Lodge’s Body Sage Spa in downtown Jackson across the street from Miller Park (home to two Jackson Hole Art Fairs every summer), are customized to your needs. 175 N. Jackson St., Jackson, 307-733-4455, rustyparrot.com/spa
With only seven tables, the Wild Sage inside Rusty Parrot Lodge is easily the valley’s most intimate restaurant. There’s also a roaring river rock fireplace, spot-on service, and one of the valley’s most diverse and extensive wine lists. 175 N. Jackson St., Jackson, 307-733-4455, rustyparrot.com/dining Make an advance reservation for afternoon tea at Persephone Bakery Café. For a little extra, you can have champagne with your tower of finger sandwiches and sweet treats. Walk in for the valley’s best brownie or pain chocolat, or a breakfast skillet that is more rustic French than cast iron cowboy. 145 E. Broadway Ave., Jackson, 307-200-6708, persephonebakery.com
Pearls by Shari
Four Seasons has one of the largest spas in Teton Village—11,685square feet; 16 treatment rooms—but you’ll often feel like you have it to yourself. Prior to a Peak Performance treatment, which uses active stretching and therapeutic massage to re-energize sore muscles, try the hot tub, cold plunge, and sauna in both the men’s and women’s locker areas. Don’t miss American B. 1956 by photographer and artist Rob Brinson hanging just outside the spa’s entrance. 7680 Granite Rd, Teton Village, 307-732-5000, fourseasons.com/ jacksonhole/spa
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2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org 39
THE MUSEUM
SHOP sources products that complement and supplement the Museum’s exhibitions and mission. Another goal? To have something for everyone, from one-of-a-kind jewelry to wildlife-themed children’s books, functional art celebrating wildlife made by local and regional artists, and wildlife art books.
1.
Like every true piece of art, no two bags made by THE BAG GIRL are the same. Each bag is wearable art, pieced together by hand from vintage and repurposed materials. Swatches could be leather, embroidered, or hand-dyed. If you find a bag you like, get it while you can. From $22.50
2.
MIRTA TUMMINO started her career in jewelry design by studying metalsmithing at Lill Street Art Center in Chicago. Today her eye for color and texture is evident in each of her handcrafted pieces, whether made from 18k gold or sterling silver, or precious or semiprecious gemstones. From $185
3.
A garden or yard can never have too many birds, especially when said birds are designed by husband-and-wife artists JAY AND MADELEINE CROWDUS. (Jay is a graphic artist and Madeleine is a fine artist.) Six years ago the couple combined their love of art and birds into RUSTY BIRDS, rustic metal silhouettes of birds from winter wrens to screech owls, ravens, robins, and nuthatches that can be mounted on nearly any surface. From $8
4.
COLD MOUNTAIN POTTERY’S STONEWARE mugs decorated with wildlife including wolves, moose, and elk, are made from glazes and clays from the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains. $28
5.
It doesn’t matter if you believe in Sasquatch or not, you’ll enjoy the SASQUATCH FIELD GUIDE. Author Dr. Jeff Meldrum has included everything from profiles of the creature to print casts and ways to differentiate between bear and Bigfoot prints. Laugh at it, or learn from it. $7.95
6.
SHAWNEE MOUNTAIN POTTERY’S ORIGINAL POTTERY PIECES—all microwavable, ovenproof, lead-free, and dishwasher safe—are unique for the fact that the clay slips the artist uses are often hand dug from stream beds or road cuts. The red-orange comes from Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The pinky-gray comes from I-70 in eastern Utah. From $80
7.
Whether hung in a window or on a Christmas tree, Trisha Waldron’s POWDER COATED STEEL ORNAMENTS are eye-catching. She has designed more than forty different animal ornaments, but our favorites are her grizzly bear, moose, elk, howling coyote, and buffalo, because, well, we’re from Jackson. $11.50
8.
Everyday jewelry has never looked as good as PEARLS BY SHARI’S rough leather and cultured freshwater pearl bracelets. There are beautiful earrings in the Museum Shop as well. From $29.95
9.
Made of 100 percent natural material by Wyoming native Diane Witcher, each TETON BASKET is an original. Diane weaves her baskets from reeds, willows, coconut, cane, and grass fiber. She begins weaving each custom design around the shed antlers of mule deer, elk, or moose so the antler becomes part of the basket. Baskets start at $130
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Growing
UP Together Interns from the Museum take it with them as they move on in their careers.
I
t’s not just the National Museum of Wildlife Art that has grown. Dozens of interns have worked at the Museum to grow their careers. Here, we catch up with two of them, Melynda Seaton and Andrew Westover.
MELYNDA SEATON,
Curator/Museum Administrator, Great Plains Art Museum, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, intern summer 2013 “During internships I’ve had at other places I worked with assistant curators, but not with the people who are actually developing exhibitions,” Seaton says. “Here I worked with Adam [Harris, the Peterson curator of art and research] and Bronwyn [Minton, associate curator of art and research]. I got actual experience.” Seaton left her internship at the Museum to go on to be a curatorial intern at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma and then an independent research
assistant at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas. In June 2014 she was hired into her current position at the Great Plains Art Museum, which is part of the Center of Great Plains Studies. “I think having the experience of the [NMWA] on my resume helped me get the position I have now,” Seaton says. “People are receptive when you work with people who are well-known in the field and Adam certainly is.”
A LIFETIME OF LEARNING
“We’re very aware that this is frequently students’ first museum experience,” says Jane Lavino, the Museum’s curator of education and exhibits. “We want it to be a good one.”
IN HER 26 YEARS AT THE MUSEUM, CURATOR OF EDUCATION AND EXHIBITS
ANDREW WESTOVER,
Ph.D. in Education, Culture, Institutions, and Society, Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences/Graduate School of Education, intern summer 2013 Andrew Westover’s future plans are in flux—he’s currently working toward his Ph.D.— but, “I imagine that I will always remain connected to cultural institutions, particularly because of their critical support for arts education,” he says. Westover was an intern at the Museum in the summer of 2013, between jobs as an education specialist at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, part of the Smithsonian Institution, and as an associate education specialist at the J. Paul Getty Museum. “While size and location are obvious points of distinction [between the NMWA and these two institutions], I particularly appreciate the Museum’s integration into the broader Jackson community,” Westover says. “Its thoughtful efforts to engage Jackson across spectrums of age, socio-economics, and identities is inspirational.” Westover says a big takeaway from his time at the Museum was that it “confirmed my interest in connecting people with art objects and seeking new ways for art museums to foster creative dialogue. I am particularly grateful for the advice and mentoring of Jane Lavino and Bronwyn Minton, and fellow intern Melynda Seaton. Conversations with them refined my understandings of how museums can serve as places for inquiry and meaning making.” A photographer when not studying or working, Westover says, “I’m an inveterate Instagrammer, and my time in Jackson included many photos of the Museum and its surroundings.” Follow him at @keepingeye. ■
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JANE LAVINO HAS HELPED DEVELOP A DIVERSE AND ENGAGING CURRICULUM FOR STUDENTS OF ALL AGES, AND SEEN FORMER STUDENTS GO INTO CAREERS IN ART.
T
here are fine artists, tattoo artists, art teachers, and art critics working today that Jane Lavino first met when they were elementary school students. Lavino has been involved with the Museum’s education programs for 26 years. She worked on the first comprehensive curriculum for pre-K through 12th grade. “We’re very aware that this is frequently students’ first museum experience,” she says. “We want it to be a good one.” Lavino imagines that in addition to the kids she’s watched grow up to have careers in art-related fields, there are also “plenty of avid young adult museum-goers who frequent museums around the world. A main goal in all of our educational programs is to provide opportunities to explore creativity and the artistic process. There are benefits to this whether you grow up to be an artist or not.”
“Kids have always responded really well to our Museum,” she says. “It is so much fun to take a school group into the galleries.” Of course when the Museum was still Art of the American West and located on the Town Square, grade school students could walk there. Lavino remembers worrying teachers would stop bringing kids to the Museum when it was no longer within walking distance. But, “we’ve never had a teacher tell us they couldn’t come up,” she says. “Teachers have learned that our collection doesn’t just have to teach art too. They know now that this collection can be used to address core subjects like reading, writing, and arithmetic.” While Lavino loves that the Museum’s education department has expanded over the years, as has every other department, she jokes that, “we need so many more meetings
today” than when the Museum was in the Town Square space. “When I started, we had one computer six of us shared. Everybody could hear everybody else on the phone. You always knew what was going on. As much as it could be distraction, it meant we didn’t need that many meetings.” But Lavino would never go back. “In the past where we had five paintings to use [in a curriculum], now we have a choice of 25 paintings. When we started here all of a sudden we had space for an exhibit of student art work. That was huge and really fabulous.” And maybe a chance for Museum visitors to see the very early work of the next Bob Kuhn. Learn more about the Museum’s educational programs at wildlifeart.org/learn. ■
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WALK IN THE WILD
AMPHITHEATER
Since it opened in 2012, the Sculpture Trail has hosted classical and rock and roll concerts, painting, dancing, Shakespearean plays, and even a running race. “It’s like an un-gesso-ed canvas,” says Petersen, who is a painter herself, of the trail. “It can be the support for anything.”
THE MUSEUM’S SCULPTURE TRAIL WAS DESIGNED WITH PLENTY OF ROOM TO GROW. IT HAS IN THE FIVE YEARS SINCE IT OPENED, AND THE IDEA IS FOR IT TO KEEP GROWING.
“I
t is as much good as can come out of the worst situation,” says the chairwoman of the Museum’s board of trustees Debbie Petersen. The “good as it gets” Petersen is talking about is the Museum’s Sculpture Trail, which was created in memory of James “Jim” F. Petersen, Debbie’s husband who died suddenly at age 62 in 2006. “Can you imagine falling in love with your soul mate and then, after he dies, being able to have a place on earth in his memory?” Petersen asks. “It still blows me
away.” It was after Jim’s death that Debbie got involved with the Museum and eventually helped the institution realize its long-held dream of a Sculpture Trail. Oakland, Calif.-based landscape architect Walter Hood designed the three-quarter-mile trail. It was his first project in the Northern Rockies. “I’ve never worked in such a vacuous scale or changing landscape,” Hood says. Petersen says, “He got it though. He had such an innate understanding for how unique this spot is.” ■
MOOSE FLATS
Before getting into sculpture, Sandy Scott was an animation background artist for the motion picture industry. Now based in Lander, Wyoming—so she can be closer to the foundry she uses—Scott has two pieces on the Sculpture Trail, Presidential Eagle and Moose Flats (pictured above).
Sandy Scott (American, b. 1943), Moose Flats, 2012. Bronze. 116 x 151 x 55 inches. Gift of Joy and Tony Greene, National Museum of Wildlife Art. © Sandy Scott.
VIEWPOINT
WALTER HOOD, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT
“Not seeing cars allows you to see the landscape. The cars—the parking lot— are always behind you; it’s a powerful thing to just see the landscape,” Hood says. “The landscape here is of a different scale than our other projects.”
AI WEIWEI’S ZODIAC HEADS
RTE 89 BUFFALO TRAIL
NEWEST SCULPTURE
Richard Loffler’s The Buffalo Trail was one of the first sculptures installed on the trail. The 64-foot long monumental bronze of seven buffalo in different positions is the single biggest piece of art in the Museum’s collection and was added to celebrate the Museum’s 25th anniversary.
“There were silent hopes,” Petersen says, “but never did I imagine that each year it would grow so perfectly.” This summer Tim Cherry’s sculpture River Mates will be unveiled. It is the 12th sculpture installed on the trail since it opened (but the 20th when you include the outdoors sculptures that predated the trail). Eventually there will be about thirty sculptures on the trail.
Mel Schockner, Loveland, CO.
Richard F. Loffler (Canadian, b. 1956), The Buffalo Trail, 2012. Bronze. 64 x 10 x 10 feet. JKM Collection®, National Museum of Wildlife Art. © Richard Loffler. 44 2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org
The Sculpture Trail hosts traveling exhibitions like Ai Weiwei’s Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, which were on display in 2015. Because the Chinese government had seized his passport in 2011 (it has since been returned to him), Weiwei wasn’t able to see his Zodiac Heads in Jackson in person, but it has been reported that from the images he saw, the Sculpture Trail was one of his favorite installations.
YOGA HAPPENS
“The images I’ve seen of yoga on the Sculpture Trail seem pretty sublime,” Hood says. Between July 13 and August 31, do yoga on the Sculpture Trail Thursdays at 10 a.m. Classes are free, and BYO mat.
Tim Cherry (Canadian, b.1965), River Mates, 2016. Bronze. 52 x 48 x 12 inches. Gift of the 2016 Collectors Circle, National Museum of Wildlife Art. © Tim Cherry. 2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org 45
Behind the Art Anna Hyatt Huntington, Jaguar and Reaching Jaguar
Anna Hyatt Huntington (American, 1876 – 1973), Jaguar, 1906-7. Bronze. 27 x 43 x 25 inches. JKM Collection ®, National Museum of Wildlife Art. © Estate of Anna Hyatt Huntington. Anna Hyatt Huntington (American, 1876 – 1973), Reaching Jaguar, 1906-7. Bronze. 44 1/2 x 37 x 20 1/2 inches. JKM Collection®, National Museum of Wildlife Art. © Estate of Anna Hyatt Huntington.
M
ost of the subjects in wildlife art are unknown. “We don’t often know who that moose in a painting is,” says Petersen curator of art and research Adam Harris. But, we do know the identity of the jaguar who modeled for these two sculptures by Anna Hyatt Huntington. Both of these pieces are based on studies of Señor Lopez, a jaguar brought to New York City from Paraguay. In 1902 Señor Lopez became the first feline occupant of the Lion House at the New York Zoological Society (aka the Bronx Zoo). “Knowing who an animal was can add a whole other level of interest and interpretation,” Harris says. For instance, we know that, while sailing to the U.S., Señor Lopez had a sore tooth. His handlers treated this by rubbing cocaine on the sore area. Arriving safely in New York, Señor Lopez was installed in an enclosure that had access to a room with large panes of glass purposebuilt to allow artists to study the animals on the other side. Huntington spent hours observing Señor Lopez before sculpting him. ■
Carl Rungius (American, b. Germany, 1869 – 1959), Hawaiian Landscape, n.d. Oil on canvas. 25 x 30 inches. JKM Collection®, National Museum of Wildlife Art. © Estate of Carl Rungius.
LOOKING BACK
JOE BISHOP, DIRECTOR OF FACILITY AND SECURITY SERVICES
J
oe Bishop remembers the Museum’s days in the 5,000-square-foot building on the Town Square. “Because we had no storage space at the Museum, our collection was all over the valley—in people’s homes, in the bank vault next door. Every time we wanted to move art it was a major ordeal,” he says. And any time they wanted to move art, “We had my van and a Chevy S10 pickup. That was it.” Bishop remembers that in 1994, over the weeks the 10 staff members moved the collection into the new building, “We rented some moving vans and a U-Haul.” Bishop also says, “We thought the new place was such a monster that we would never fill it.” Of course Bishop has seen the Museum’s collection grow to fill the new space, which includes 14,000-sqaure-feet of exhibition space and 1,600-square-feet of dedicated storage space. It’s his job to keep the entire building, and all of its contents, safe, dry, and at a relative 45 percent humidity. “At least that’s what we try for. With a temperature of about 68 degrees,” he says. When Bishop started in his position 25 years ago, the Museum’s facility and maintenance staff was just one person. “Today we have seven of us and we stay busy,” he says. Bishop, a Chicago native and Army veteran who “came out here for vacation and never left,” didn’t know much about wildlife art when he started working at the Museum. “It has become an institute of higher learning for myself,” he says. “You never know who or what is going to come through that front door. Every day is a new experience and a new challenge.” Now Bishop is a Carl Rungius fan. “A lot of people are unaware that he made his way to Maui, but his paintings from there are fascinating,” he says. “We have a small landscape study of the Tetons from Rungius in our collection. I like to think about the possibility of him riding past this piece of property back in his day.” ■
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When Joe isn’t working, with his wife he builds and races custom performance motorcycles. He has raced at the Bonneville Salt Flats, and in Salt Lake City and Boise, and done the Colorado Mile in Denver. “I was born into bikes,” he says. “I like working on them as much as riding.” A goal of his is to break 200 miles per hour on one of his bikes. “I’ve been close a couple of times,” he says.
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Edible Art The Museum’s new restaurant Palate aims to be a destination in itself, with artfully prepared food and the valley’s most stunning views. The National Elk Refuge is right out its windows.
Palate and its patio join Johnston Hall and the Sculpture Trail as places available to rent for weddings, private parties, and corporate events. The restaurant can seat 55 people inside with seating for almost as many outside (weather permitting). Palate Catering, of which Clark Myers is executive chef, has an extensive menu. “Our catering menu is the same quality as our restaurants’ menus,” he says. “All of our food is of the highest quality and made from scratch.”
THE PERFECT SUNDAY 1. Load your bikes into your car. 2. Park your car in the Home Ranch Lot, or at Teton Mountain Bike Tours; you can rent an e-bike from the latter.
“W
e consider our food art,” says Christine Mara Swain, Palate’s owner and catering director and the designer of the new restaurant off Johnston Hall. After a six-month remodel, Palate opened in early May offering lunch, cocktails, wine, charcuterie, and the valley’s best Sunday brunch. “My parents gave me a membership to the Museum when I first moved to Jackson and one of my early jobs here was at an art gallery, so having the opportunity to create Palate feels like coming full circle,” Swain says. “Being able to be a part of the Museum in this way and at this level is special. And now I get to be up here and see the art and the views every day—it’s a different feeling up here than in town.” While Palate is open in all seasons (it is closed in April and November), it really shines in summer with an outdoor patio complete with chess tables, a living wall, and the valley’s best views of the Elk Refuge. The rest of the year, diners have to settle for merely the sweeping vistas; in addition to the elk refuge, Palate’s windows frame Sleeping Indian, Flat Creek, and Jackson Peak. Swain says she designed Palate to take advantage of these views. “Our tagline is ‘The Food, The View, The Art’ and that’s true,” Swain says. Framed mirror panels hang above the banquette seating that runs along the length of the restaurant’s back wall. Whether you’re facing outside or not, you’ll see the mountains. To stand up to the views outside, and inside, the Museum, Palate brought in executive chef Clark Myers from its sister restaurant Gather to head up the culinary team. (Myers was formerly also a chef at Jenny Lake Lodge and Couloir.) “My vision is to artfully prepare food that matches the quality of the art,” says Myers, who has been working in professional kitchens since he was 16. “When people walk into the Museum, they’re inspired by the art. I want them to come into Palate and be further inspired. We are not merely an amenity. I want Palate to be an experience in itself.” Open from 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. daily. Reservations recommended for brunch. Palatejh.com ■
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3. Ride the two blocks to the Jackson Hole & Greater Yellowstone Visitor Center and the start of the Jackson-Moose pathway. 4. Check out the birds—dozens of species have been counted here—in the riparian area near where U.S. 191 crosses Flat Creek. 5. Ride 2 miles to a tunnel under U.S. 191. 6. Turn into the tunnel and continue up Rungius Road to the Museum. 7. Peruse the Museum’s temporary exhibits and permanent collection. 8. Have brunch on Palate’s patio. 9. Pop into the Museum Store. 10. Walk the Sculpture Trail. 11. Ride 2 miles further north to the “Welcome to Grand Teton National Park” sign, or, if you’ve pedaled enough, return to town.
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If groups can commit to 2.5 hours at the museum, they can enjoy a catered lunch in the Members’ Lounge, a docent tour, and still have time to explore on their own.
WEDDINGS AMONG WILDLIFE
Seadar and Aaron’s band Screen Door Porch has been described as “Stevie Nicks meets The Band, with Ryan Adams and Bonnie Raitt hanging out backstage.” SDP’s 2017 album Pay It Forward includes five original songs written by the couple. Wyoming Public Radio listeners named the band’s 2015 album Modern Settler “Album of the Year.” ScreenDoorPorch.com
When it came time for one of the most important shows of their lives, the couple behind the band Screen Door Porch decided to have it at the Museum.
BUILD IT AND TOUR GROUPS WILL COME A dedicated supervisor of group tours makes it easy for groups of all sizes to experience the Museum.
G
of information critically important to tour operators: “We have iven only 24-hours’ notice that a group of one hundred plenty of parking for buses,” she says. people wanted to tour the Museum, Maggie Davis, When the tour groups arrive at the Museum, Davis or one supervisor of group tours and visitor services, sprang of her staff (but usually Davis), meets each arriving bus. “I like into action. The Jackson native organized more docents than to introduce myself and explain a little bit about what they’re usual to come in and briefed the front desk staff. “It was pretty going to see and what the photography policy is,” she says. “I tell nuts,” she says. “But it was fun.” Although the last-minute everyone I live behind the front desk and to come to me with any timing of this group’s arrival was unique—some groups book questions. I like to give members of the bus groups a contact in up to 18 months in advance; more usual is four months’ advance the Museum. They have their guide they’re traveling with, but notice—by the time they were leaving, it was a scene Davis was I’m their Museum person.” And then it’s time to head inside. familiar with. “Everyone was saying that they wanted more time “Everyone is always in awe when they walk in,” here,” Davis says. Davis says. In addition to working with Davis recommends groups allot no less than groups that are already in Jackson “Someone talking to you is ninety minutes for the Museum, but she does and looking for a specific activity to nice, but I think you need work annually with several groups that are in fill a slot of free time like the group and out in fifty minutes. Ideally, Davis would mentioned above, Davis also works that time to wander through love for groups to stay for two-and-a-half hours. with tour companies like Collette, “Then they could be greeted, have lunch in the Tauck, and Roads Scholars that have the galleries on your own and Members’ Lounge—that’s an hour-and-a-half guided itineraries through the state make your own opinion,” right there—do an 45-minute docent tour, and and region. Annually, more than fifty they’d still have some time on their own before of these traveling groups make stops Davis says. “Self exploration they had to leave.” at the Museum. Late this winter, “Someone talking to you is nice, but I Davis traveled to St. Louis, Missouri is huge in my opinion.” think you need that time to wander through for the annual National Tour the galleries on your own and make your own Association Travel Exchange. It is opinion,” Davis says. “Self exploration is huge in here that she has the opportunity to my opinion.” spread the word about the Museum to tour companies coming Davis says that whatever length of time a tour group spends to this area. “It is like speed dating,” Davis says of the sevenat the Museum, “The people always say, ‘We need more time.’ I minute meetings she gets with tour operators. Her pitch? “I start often have spouses who came in grumbling that they’re not art with our lovely location—perched on a hill just two-and-a-halfpeople come up to me at the end and tell me how much they miles north of town in a Scottish castle-influenced building,” she loved it.” ■ says. “I then explain that we have 14,000-square-feet of galleries with everything from sculptures of moose to Andy Warhol’s Endangered Species.” Davis, who has been working with tour For tour group information, email mdavis@wildlifeart.org or go groups at the Museum since 2009, knows there’s one more piece to wildlifeart.org/visit/group-tours.
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Annually about two hundred outside events are held at the museum, from rehearsal dinners to weddings, training sessions, and corporate events.
S
eadar Rose and Aaron Davis “really didn’t consider any other spaces” besides the National Museum of Wildlife Art for their wedding. “We always loved the interior of the Museum.” Seadar and Aaron’s wedding reception had about eighty guests. The actual wedding ceremony was outside in Grand Teton National Park, and then guests came to the Museum. “Because we took pictures after the ceremony, all of our guests got to the Museum before we did,” Seadar says. “I remember coming in and it looked so awesome. My mom did the flowers for it and it all came together. Wendy [Merrick, manager of events] and the staff there did a wonderful job. Everybody was already having so much fun when we did show up. We just blended right into the mix.” Seadar and Aaron didn’t just pick the Museum because they liked the space, but also because they liked the staff. After he moved to the valley in 2001, Aaron worked for the Community Children’s Project (CCP). As part of that, he brought kids up
to the Museum once a week. Seadar’s first job when she moved to Jackson was working for the Museum’s catering department. Together, the couple, who founded the band Screen Door Porch, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year and released its fourth studio album in January, had played at several of the Museum’s Mix’d Media events. “So the place kind of felt like an old friend to both of us,” Aaron says. And guests, about half of whom came from out of the valley, quickly made friends with the Museum. “People were impressed all the way around,” Aaron says. “From the food to how beautiful the space was and the band we got.” Seadar adds, “We knew that the galleries would be open during the reception and that’s one of the things we thought was coolest about having it at the Museum, but the guests were really impressed by that. We made a point of sending everyone into the galleries to see the art. You can’t do something like that at most wedding receptions.” ■
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“IRIDESCENCE: JOHN GOULD’S HUMMINGBIRDS”
BEHIND THE ART
May 27 - August 27, 2017
Noted Jackson Hole naturalist and writer Bert Raynes takes a deeper look at this summer’s exhibit “Iridescence: John Gould’s Hummingbirds.”
This is a powerful exhibit. For
John Gould (British, 1804-1881). Phaethornis Eremita: Little Hermit. Lithograph in color on wove paper, 21 1/2 x 14 3/8 in. (54.6 x 36.5 cm). This image: Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Estate of Emily Winthrop Miles, 64.98.212.
This collection of avian artworks by John Gould includes eighty antique prints from c. 1861. This exhibition highlights a recent donation from John Moore and gives visitors an in-depth look at a single artist prominent in the wildlife art field. The exhibit includes all twenty species of hummingbirds known to exist in North America at that time, plus sixty other species from the Western Hemisphere. John Gould (September 1804 – 3 February 1881) was an English ornithologist and a bird artist. He was named a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), an award granted by the Royal Society of London, the world’s oldest scientific academy in continuous existence, to individuals judged to have made a “substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science, and medical science.” (Other scientists awarded a fellowship by the Royal Society include Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Ernest Rutherford, Albert Einstein, Dorothy Hodgkin, and Alan Turing, among others.) Gould is considered the father of bird study in Australia; that country’s Gould League is named after him. His identification of the birds now nicknamed “Darwin’s finches” played a role in the inception of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Gould’s work is referenced in Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species.
me, it opened up a whole artist’s influence and put John Gould’s accomplishments and artistry into a historical perspective I was unaware of. — Bert Raynes
Holy Moly! Who is this guy? This print looks like an Audubon, but it turns out it’s the work of an Englishman, John Gould, who also worked in the mid-19th century. Perhaps the wildlife art gods will forgive those of us brought up on John James Audubon’s works. What we have in “Iridescence: John Gould’s Hummingbirds” is a collection of eighty newly acquired antique prints from Gould’s Monograph of the Trochilidae. Published in 1861 after 12 years of work, the monograph includes illustrations of the then-known 320 species of hummingbirds (there are now just 330 hummingbird species extant). Hummingbirds live only in North and South America. Most species are found near the equator and the Andes Mountains. The United States hosts perhaps twenty species. Jackson Hole, at about 43°N latitude, is the regular summer
residence of four species of hummers: Calliope, Broad-tailed, Black-chinned, and Rufous. A handful of out-of-range species have been spotted in the valley too. Roger Tory Peterson, an American successor of Gould and Audubon who worked throughout the 20th century, summarizes a description of hummingbirds: “The smallest of all birds are included in this family. Usually iridescent with needlelike bills for sipping nectar from the flowers. The wing motion is so rapid that the wings in most species are blurred and produce an audible whir. Hover when feeding, pugnacious. Jewel-like throat feathers, or gorgets, adorn the males of most species.” Each species of hummer evolved alongside its preferred flower. (See this by studying the shapes of the beaks of different species.) This is a powerful exhibit. For me, it opened up a whole artist’s influence and put John Gould’s accomplishments and artistry into a historical perspective I was unaware of. ■ —Bert Raynes
CONSERVATIONIST AND AUTHOR BERT RAYNES co-founded the Jackson Hole Bird Club in 1976. He is the subject of the awardwinning 2015 documentary “Far Afield: A Conservation Love Story.” Readers have enjoyed his column “Far Afield” in the Jackson Hole News&Guide (formerly the Jackson Hole News) since 1976. With his late wife Meg, Raynes founded the Meg and Bert Raynes Wildlife Fund. The fund’s goal is to initiate, augment, and fund projects and activities to help maintain viable and sustainable wildlife populations into the future, especially in Wyoming and Jackson Hole, through support of research, education, habitat protection, and habitat restoration. Learn more at rayneswildlifefund.org.
Burt Raynes photograph courtesy of David Swift 52 2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org
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Bruno Liljefors (Swedish, 1860 - 1939), Peregrine Attacking Mallard, 1929. Oil on canvas. 47 1/4 x 62 3/4 inches. JKM Collection®, National Museum of Wildlife Art.
SANCTUARY ON THE HILL The National Museum of Wildlife Art is a global beacon for the genre.
By Todd Wilkinson
I
n a subterranean chamber hidden beneath the slope of a sagebrush-covered hill, Adam Duncan Harris stood next to Lars Jonsson and Kent Ullberg. The two tall Swedes held forth excitedly in their native tongue. Hanging before them was a colorful masterwork—a portrayal of a raptor pursuing waterfowl with the aerial agility of a fighter jet. Jonsson, regarded as one of the world’s foremost living painters of birds, and Ullberg, an acclaimed sculptor of grand wildlife monuments, looked at the artist’s signature—“Bruno Liljefors”— almost as if they couldn’t believe their eyes. The painting had recently been flown to Wyoming from Europe and soon it would appear on a wall out in the main galleries. Outside and below us, on U.S. Highway 191, a steady stream of travelers, oblivious to the giddy enthusiasm in the museum on the hillside above them, proceeded north toward Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Jonsson and Ullberg continued their banter until finally Harris, the Petersen curator of art and research, asked them to translate their words into English. “Lars was expressing his amazement that this Liljefors is here and not in another major museum in Stockholm, Paris, New York, or a private collection,” Ullberg explained. “It’s a remarkable painting, really a fine example of one of the finest nature artists who ever lived.” Liljefors’ Peregrine Attacking Mallards was added to the Museum’s permanent collection in 2001.
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Theodore Gericault (French, 1791 – 1824), Two Lions, after Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1810. Oil on canvas. 25 1/2 x 32 inches. JKM Collection®, National Museum of Wildlife Art.
Auguste Rodin (French, 1840 – 1917), Le Lion Qui Pleure, modeled 1881, cast 1955. Bronze. 11 ¼ x 13 ¼ x 6 ½ inches. JKM Collection®, National Museum of Wildlife Art.
At the National Museum of Wildlife Art there is a casting of Auguste Rodin’s The Crying Lion—yes, the same Rodin famous for The Thinker. This piece was inspired by a visit Rodin took to Jardin des Plantes (the Paris Zoo) . One day while strolling through the reinstalled European gallery early in the National Museum of Wildlife Art’s 30th anniversary year, I thought back to that memorable autumn afternoon in the vault with Adam, Lars, Kent, and the Liljefors and was reminded of how this institution is without peer in the world of fine art. Next to Liljefors’ 1929 oil are works by Wilhelm Kuhnert, Richard Friese, and Carl Rungius, who is widely regarded as the best painter of North American big game animals who ever lived. Together, this group of artists is known as “the Big Four”—a quartet classically trained in Europe but whose rapturous reverence for nature shaped generations of wildlife artists in America. There are also pieces in the Museum’s 5,000-piece permanent collection by artists whose work hangs in the world’s best fine art museums. At the National Museum of Wildlife Art there is a casting of Auguste Rodin’s The Crying Lion—yes, the same Rodin famous for The Thinker. This piece was inspired by a visit Rodin took to Jardin des Plantes (the Paris Zoo) in the company of Louis-Antoine Barye, founder of the European movement known as Les Animaliers (“the animal sculptors”). Barye is also represented in the NMWA’s permanent collection as is perhaps the most heralded animalier, Rembrandt Bugatti. Most people passing through Jackson Hole do so without realizing the valley is home to the wildlife art equivalent of the Louvre, Hermitage, Metropolitan, and Prado. “Yes, we’ve branched out from Rungius and the Big Four,” Harris says. “These are the very same artists you’ll find in the Louvre. There’s been significant acquisitions that elevate wildlife art to a different level of appreciation and understanding. It’s been fun to see people’s reactions to these works. There’s amazement and wonder that we have these gems in Jackson.” 56 2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org
For example, from the short-lived but influential career of Théodore Géricault (1791-1814), who was one of the forerunners of the Romantic movement, the Museum has the painting Two Lions. The Museum’s Tiger Observing Cranes, by French Salon artist Jean-Léon Gérôme, is one in a series of tiger paintings the artist started in 1882. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York owns a similar Gerome composition titled Tiger and Cubs. Since it was founded in 1987, the National Museum of Wildlife Art—the only Congressionally designated wildlife art museum in the U.S.—has championed and celebrated the interwoven connection art and nature have to history, politics, and culture, and it has helped legitimize wildlife art. For many years, art professionals and critics claimed wildlife art was passé, archaic, and backward looking—that it was somehow “lesser art,” Ullberg says. “That’s just not true.” Wildlife art calls attention to the miraculous biodiversity on this planet and reflects the course of human history. Ullberg notes its message is contemporary, poignant, and, in some ways, avant-garde. “We live in the environmental age. Wildlife art speaks to the most pressing issues of our time,” he says. It influenced earlier times too. It was wildlife art—works by Albert Bierstadt, John James Audubon, Karl Bodmer, George Catlin, Frederic Remington, and Charles M. Russell chronicling the decimation of wildlife and the taming of the frontier—that set the stage for the birth of the conservation movement. Paintings by Thomas Moran were pivotal in convincing Congress to set aside Yellowstone as the first national park in the world in 1872. ° ° ° ° 2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org 57
Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824 – 1904), Tiger Observing Cranes, c. 1890. Oil on canvas, mounted on panel. 32 x 25 1/4 inches. National Museum of Wildlife Art Collection.
“Yes, we’ve branched out from Rungius and the Big Four,” Harris says. “These are the very same artists you’ll find in the Louvre. There’s been significant acquisitions that elevate wildlife art to a different level of appreciation and understanding. It’s been fun to see people’s reactions to these works. There’s amazement and wonder that we have these gems in Jackson.”
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I’ve been writing about wildlife art for more than thirty years and have penned several art books. I’ll never forget the Museum’s pre-opening days, when it was springing to life in its first humble home, a non-descript building located on the northeast corner of Jackson’s Town Square. During the 1980s, “wildlife art” was then fighting against a gross misperception. Fine art critics largely wrote it off as merely being literal, documentarian, or photo-realistic work that might appear on the Federal Duck Stamp or in the form of cheap limited edition prints of a whitetail deer adorning someone’s cabin in the woods. In other words, it was folksy kitsch only associated with hunting. I’ll never forget being in the Museum when a group of tourists entered and wondered where they might see stuffed heads of trophy elk, moose, and bears because, to them, that’s what “wildlife art” was. The National Museum of Wildlife Art faced a steep uphill battle to educate the masses—to demonstrate that Pablo Picasso created animal art (with his famous dove drawings) as did Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt. Consider Frank Benson who, when not painting waterfowl scenes, became a leader in turn of the century American Impressionism alongside masters like John Singer Sargent. Benson made popular sporting art etchings and oils and also painted the exquisite pastoral murals found inside the original Library of Congress. The late Bob Kuhn, considered the greatest large mammal painter of the last fifty years, got his fine art degree at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and created illustrations that appeared before millions of readers in the pages of hook and bullet magazines. Kuhn “the wildlife artist” drew inspiration from abstract expressionist Mark Rothko. I had many conversations with Kuhn and he told me that no other venue in the world brought respectability to wildlife art the way the Museum in Jackson has. Kuhn is no softy, nonetheless he told me that he wept when walking through the galleries, so
moved by the joy of having his work hang next to work by the likes of Rungius, N.C. Wyeth, and John Clymer. (The National Museum of Wildlife Art has more Kuhns in its collection than any other museum does.) Clymer had a studio in Teton Village and after he died it was moved and recreated inside the Museum. With his wildlife and Western history paintings now routinely selling for six figures, few know that Clymer was second only to Norman Rockwell in the number of covers he created for the Saturday Evening Post. I’ve seen respect for wildlife art burgeon and grow. This is evident in the visitors at the National Museum of Wildlife Art—they’re from around the world. And also in where pieces from the Museum’s collection have traveled—to the country’s finest museums. The Museum’s collection has won the respect of top curators. “Animals have such an important— and sometimes overlooked—tradition in American and European art,” says scholar and author Peter Hassrick, a former director of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody (now the Buffalo Bill Center of the West) and a founding director of Santa Fe’s Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. “More than just having a symbolic role in our society, their ongoing treatment in art has profound contemporary relevance.” Innovatively, the museum’s collection is organized and displayed around distinct moments in art and human history, so that visitors can literally see how growth in knowledge was mirrored in two and three dimensions: from the Greco-Roman, Tuscan, and Assyrian to the Enlightenment; from the dawn of the theory of evolution to modern ecological awareness; from Old World ideals in which nature was referenced mythologically to New World interpretations reflecting a more sophisticated, science-based understanding of other living beings. Pieces do not only have their own narratives; many also carry a fascinating provenance. The Liljefors’ piece, along with an earlier study that inspired it, hung inside the artist’s own home and was part of the family estate until it disappeared for a time. The painting was never before publicly viewed until it arrived at this Museum, where it became an example of how art can delight again when brought into fresh light. Liljefors was a contemporary and dear friend of the great Swedish Impressionist Anders Zorn, revered as a Colorist. Liljefors could have painted anything, but he chose to depict nature, often scenes of birds of prey and their targets. He demonstrated that natural history was valid as subject matter and then brought hallmarks of fine art—color, light, shadow, value, and composition—to his portrayals. In his work, Liljefors challenged that if a human figure could qualify as an object of fine art and be applauded by the Salon, why couldn’t wildlife?
“I feel like every time we acquire something new it grows and advances our understanding of the material,” Harris says. “A big leap for me occurred when we acquired two major paintings by Joseph Wolf. He is a bridge that connects Darwin to Rungius.” The museum’s 1856 Wolf masterpiece Gyrfalcons Striking a Kite, which presages some of Liljefors’ works, represents a departure from Neo-classicism and Romanticism. On Wolf’s easel and to viewers of his work, no longer were animals considered mere symbols, but as worthy meditations on beauty and as specimens that offered windows into the transcendental value of wildness. Most compellingly, Wolf showed that wildlife had natural histories worthy of scientific study and translatable in art. Wolf’s work also speaks to the context of artist John James Audubon whose Birds in America is considered the first and one of the best comprehensive bird field guides in the New World. Besides those iconic painters whose work is in the Museum’s collection, North American sculptors from the Romantic era and beyond are well represented, from Edward Kemeys (his lion statues adorn the front steps at the Art Institute of Chicago) to Henry Merwin Shrady and Charles R. Knight. There are also heroic pieces by Anna Hyatt Huntington and sculptures by Paul Manship, who embraced ancient symbolism in his Art Deco style. “Wildlife art is embedded in the zeitgeist of this ecological age. Artists today are doing all kinds of things using animal imagery. It doesn’t have to be a naturalistic portrayal,” Harris notes. “You can make a political point or engage in humorous satire. Or, like Steve Kestrel with Silent Messenger, it can make people think about our own role and what we’re
doing to nature and the environment. We are in an amazing era right now of worldwide concern for the earth. You see it being expressed in a multitude of ways.” Silent Messenger, one of the 17 Kestrel pieces in the Museum’s collection, features a raven carved of Wyoming black granite laying in a sarcophagus made of Colorado red sandstone. It is intended to spark reflection about our relationship to the earth: Are we content to mourn the loss of nature or will we rally to save it? Kestrel believes that the National Museum of Wildlife Art is, within the fine art world, as important to conservation values as Yellowstone is. The fact that the Museum and the wildlands it celebrates inhabit the same ecosystem is extraordinary. Kestrel thinks artists now and in the future play a vital role equal to that of their predecessors. “Artists should try to expand the public’s deep understanding of the animal and its environmental connections to the overall picture. The interconnectedness between animals, ecosystems, and humans is the only currency that will make a difference for future generations,” Kestrel says. “I think humanity is at a point in time where, for artists to simply dawdle and make pretty, shiny objects for the sake of art is missing the imperative. We are running out of time. Art reminds us not only who we were and what we are, but also what we can be by welcoming nature into our lives. No place does that better in the world than the National Museum of Wildlife Art.” For 32 years, Todd Wilkinson has written widely on the environment, art, and the West for publications including National Geographic and The Washington Post. He also has authored several books on art, wildlife, and notable people. ■
Joseph Wolf (German, 1820 - 1899), Gyrfalcons Striking a Kite, 1856, Oil on canvas, 71 x 59 inches. Generously donated by Cornelia Guest and the Robert S. and Grayce B. Kerr Foundation, National Museum of Wildlife Art. 2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org 59
A CON VERSATION WITH
JA NE GOODALL By Irene Rawlings
From her trailblazing work with chimpanzees to her current efforts on behalf of conservation, Rungius Medal winner Jane Goodall’s vision is quite clear: A more peaceful, environmentally conscious world is good for both human rights and animal welfare. The Jane Goodall Institute / By Bill Wallauer
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The Jane Goodall Institute / By Bill Wallauer
J
ane Goodall is arguably the world’s most famous and most recognizable ethologist, best known for her groundbreaking work with chimpanzees. Her interest in nature started early. She was born in London in 1934 but raised in the English countryside where she acquired a menagerie of pets—dogs, guinea pigs, hens, lizards, and a tortoise—and fell in love with the stories of Tarzan and Dr. Doolittle. In 1957, she traveled to Africa where she met and worked with Louis Leakey, the paleontologist who (along with his wife, Mary, also a paleontologist) established that humans evolved in Africa. Impressed with Jane’s knowledge of animals and passion for Africa, the Leakeys funded her first research project at Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in the ancient tropical forest on the shore of Lake Tanganyika. In 1960, Jane set up her forest research station with her mother in tow because British officials refused to permit a young girl to live in the bush alone. Over the next several decades, Jane lived among wild chimpanzees, patiently documenting their behavior. She was the first to observe their complex society—mother-child bonding, the making and using of tools, and what some might call a primitive sort of warfare. The data she collected is still valued by researchers today. Forty years ago (in 1977), she founded the Jane Goodall Institute—initially to promote chimpanzee research at Gombe, and later broadening the mission to include nine specific and interrelated
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Michael Neugebauer
Every single individual matters. Every one of us can make a difference every single day by what we eat and what we wear. It may seem insignificant but all of us are making small, ethical choices every day. If we care, we can make the right choices for our community and our planet. — Jane Goodall
Robert Ratzer
programs to improve the lives of people, animals, and the environment. Now, she travels nearly three hundred days a year on behalf of the Institute, spreading the message of conservation to younger generations through the organization’s Roots & Shoots program. She has received innumerable accolades and awards over the past six-plus decades, including being named Messenger of Peace, the United Nations’ highest honor. Closer to Jackson, in 2001, the National Museum of Wildlife Art awarded her the Rungius Medal for her lifetime contributions to public awareness of wildlife and wilderness. We caught up with her in Grand Island, Nebraska, where she was taking some personal time to enjoy the magic of the annual sandhill crane migration. “It is one of the greatest migrations on earth ... half-a-million magnificent sandhill cranes soaring and swooping in graceful dance,” she says. Jane has come here every spring for sixteen years with wildlife photographer and longtime friend Tom Mangelsen, whom she met in 2001 at the Museum when she accepted her Rungius Medal. Mangelsen remembers approaching her and asking if she’d like to visit Yellowstone. She said, “yes” and, alongside Tom, saw her first wolf and her first grizzly bear. “These are animals I read about as a child,” she says, “and here I am watching a grizzly … calmly walking across the road.”
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TOM MANGELSEN photographed Grizzly: The Bears of Greater Yellowstone (Todd Wilkinson is the author) and The Last Great Wild Places, for which Jane Goodall wrote the introduction. He has a gallery, Images of Nature, in Jackson. The Jane Goodall Institute / By Fernando Turmo
The Photoz-Roots & Shoots Malaysia
Q&A WITH JANE Call of the Wild (COTW): When did your fascination with wild animals start? Jane Goodall: My father gave me a lifelike stuffed chimpanzee when I was very small. I still have it, by the way. My mother’s friends were freaked out and thought the animal would give me nightmares. Quite the contrary. My mother found me books about animals to read. I remember reading Dr. Doolittle and wanting to learn animal language. I read Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes when I was ten years old and I immediately wanted to go to Africa. But, at the time, it was a dark continent and so far away and we didn’t have much money at all. But my mother said that you have to dream about something in order to achieve it. COTW: So how did you make your Africa dream reality? JG: As soon after completing school as I had (the money) saved… this was in March of 1957…I just set off. I worked at several clerical jobs and as a waitress to make enough money for a one-way ticket. Back then, the trip (by ship) took three weeks. COTW: And what happened when you got there? JG: Once in Nairobi, I took an office job and telephoned Louis Leakey. The Leakeys hired me as a secretary and assistant. COTW: What did you learn from working with the Leakeys? JG: I worked as an assistant and a secretary and, ultimately, hunting hominoid fossils at Olduvai Gorge. I didn’t know it at the time, but Louis was looking for someone not steeped in academia to study chimpanzees. I didn’t have any college when I started
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working with chimpanzees and made my first discoveries. After that, Leakey told me that, in order to be taken seriously, I would have to earn a Ph.D. He helped me to apply to Cambridge (in England) where, among other things, I was told that you should not name your chimps but, instead, give them numbers. I knew different. You can’t share your life with animals and not know that each one of them has a definite personality. My dogs taught me this when I was still a small child. COTW: Do you think your work has changed perceptions of the role of women in science? JG: I did what I dreamed of and, yes, later I encouraged many girls who wanted to go into science through the Jane Goodall Institute Research Center at Duke University that now manages the Gombe Chimpanzee Project. (Duke houses all of Goodall’s notes from her fifty years of in-the-field chimpanzee research). Louis Leakey often said that women make better scientists because they are more patient and, perhaps, more intuitive. COTW: How can we balance the needs of human beings with those of animals and the environment? JG: To begin to answer, let me tell you a personal story. I was happy doing what I was doing at Gombe (now Gombe Stream National Park). It was the perfect life. I couldn’t imagine anything better. In 1986, I attended the Understanding Chimpanzees Conference hosted by the Chicago Academy of Sciences. What I learned there about the bush meat trade and the treatment of chimpanzees in some laboratories was utterly shocking. I realized I had to do something about it. I came to the conference as a scientist and left as an activist with a sense of urgency.
COTW: What did you do next?
COTW: How did Roots & Shoots get started?
JG: I shifted my focus from the close-up study of chimpanzees in the wild to the bigger picture. That includes the plight of the people who live there. People were cutting down the forest for charcoal and to clear land to plant crops. I saw the tiny island of forest—all that remained of the forest that once stretched through Burundi and Uganda and throughout the Great Congo Basin. After 1989, the Jane Goodall Institute began working with local communities, public officials, and NGOs to focus on the landscape surrounding Gombe National Park.
JG: In 1991, a group of twelve very thoughtful secondary school students came to my home in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania. They said they lost hope, that we, the adults, had compromised their future and it seemed there was not much they could do about it. They were concerned about everything from litter to overfishing to street children to destruction of coral reefs. Roots & Shoots was born at that meeting.
COTW: How do you start getting into the bigger picture? JG: We went into the 12 villages nearest Gombe not with solutions but to listen to what people wanted. Change starts with listening. Together, we came up with holistic, communitycentered programs to improve the management of water and reforestation. But, most importantly, later we trained volunteers from the villages in forest-monitoring technologies so they could be stewards of their own forests. Local people have always been one of the most important parts of the conservation effort. COTW: How do you see Roots & Shoots complementing the bigger picture? JG: It has spread to nearly one hundred countries. Each of the individual groups works to address the concerns of their own community—from smaller projects like collecting trash to projects that require more effort, like restoring a wetland or a tall-grass prairie or raising money for an animal shelter. The students instinctively understand that everything is interrelated, that people, animals, and the environment are part of one big family.
NMWA: Can art do anything for the bigger picture? JG: Art has the power to make science less cold…the head and heart working in harmony. I am not good at art but I believe it is an important part of understanding what goes on in nature. NMWA: How can ordinary citizens get involved? JG: Spread the word. Get your children and grandchildren involved in conservation. Contribute to organizations that sponsor wildlife and habitat conservation. If we understand, we will care. If we care, we will help. Every one of us matters. Every one has a role to play. Every one of us makes a difference every day. Learn more about the Jane Goodall Institute’s mission, programs, and initiatives and any upcoming speaking engagements of Jane’s at janegoodall.org. Irene Rawlings writes about art, food, travel, and the environment for National Geographic Traveler, WSJ, Robb Report, Art & Antiques, and others, and hosts an awardwinning interview program on iHeartMedia radio stations. ■
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2017 EXHIBITS
Catch These While You Can
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) FAR LEFT: Bighorn Ram, 1983. Screenprint. 38 x 38 inches. TOP LEFT: Black Rhinoceros, 1983. Screenprint. 38 x 38 inches. TOP RIGHT: Orangutan, 1983. Screenprint. 38 x 38 inches. BOTTOM LEFT: San Francisco Silverspot, 1983 [Butterfly], 1983. Screenprint. 38 x 38 inches. BOTTOM RIGHT: Grevy’s Zebra, 1983. Screenprint. 38 x 38 inches. © 2017 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
This year’s temporary exhibits include Andy Warhol’s Endangered Species portfolio, 19th century prints of hummingbirds by ornithologist John Gould, and Joel Sartore’s “Photo Ark,” which is being shown outside of the National Geographic Museum for one of the first times, and then there’s the reinstallation of the Museum’s permanent collection.
F
“
or our 30th Anniversary, we have a great lineup of exhibits, ” says Petersen curator of art and research Adam Harris. “We are particularly excited about the summer shows.” This summer features major exhibitions of work by Andy Warhol, National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore, and Britain’s answer to John James Audubon, ornithologist John Gould. While two of these three (“Photo Ark: Photography by Joel
Sartore” and “Iridescence: John Gould’s Hummingbirds”) are gone by the end of the August, “Andy Warhol: Endangered Species” hangs though November. The reinstallation of the permanent collection isn’t going anywhere and the five new galleries open May 16. After the Museum’s Western Visions® Show and Sale in September, additional exhibits celebrating the 30th Anniversary open. Read more at wildlifeart.org/art/exhibits.
“ANDY WARHOL: ENDANGERED SPECIES” May 17 – November 5, 2017 In 1983, ten years after the Endangered Species Act was passed, conservationists and art dealers Ronald and Frayda Feldman asked Andy Warhol if he would do a series of prints of endangered animals. Warhol, who had a lifelong interest in nature, did ten pieces, each of which focused on a single animal on the Endangered Species List. Today, seven of the ten animals Warhol depicted remain vulnerable or endangered. The bald eagle, Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, and Pine Barrens tree frog have been removed from the Endangered Species List. The Sumatran orangutan and the black rhinoceros are now listed as critically endangered. Warhol also created prints of a giant panda, callippe silverspot butterfly, Siberian tiger, Grevy’s zebra, and African elephant. The first time Warhol’s Endangered Species were exhibited at the Museum, they were on loan from The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. “The board was so enamored with them we started looking for a set for our own collection,” Harris says. The purchase of a complete portfolio in 2006 was facilitated by gifts from the Collector’s Circle (a group of about sixty art enthusiasts and patrons), an anonymous donor, and the NMWA’s Acquisition Fund. Mostly recently (in 2016) the portfolio was on exhibit at The Baker Museum at Artis-Naples. “There is always a desire to have them out because of the Andy Warhol name and because they’re such great prints,” Harris says. “But to preserve them for future generations—they’re works on paper—they should only be out half of any given year. This year, we’re giving them to ourselves.”
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In North America at the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were between 1.5 million and 2 million bighorn sheep. Today there are less than 70,000.
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2017 EXHIBITS
“IRIDESCENCE: JOHN GOULD’S HUMMINGBIRDS” May 26 – August 27 By the age of 23 John Gould was the curator and preserver of the Zoological Society of London. Less than four years later he published his first book about birds. Over his sixty-year career, Gould produced approximately three thousand plates of birds. More an ornithologist and an expert in taxidermy than a fine artist, Gould worked with artists including his wife Elizabeth Gould, Edward Lear, Joseph Wolf, and William Matthew Hart to produce the images that appeared in his books. It was work by Gould—identifying many of the specimens that Charles Darwin brought back to England with him from the Galapagos Islands as unique species—that was a cornerstone in Darwin’s theory of evolution. Gould had a lifelong interest in hummingbirds. By 1851, he had accumulated a collection of 320 species. Two years prior be began working on A Monograph of the Trochilidae. The monograph was completed in 1861 and included 360 plates. It is eighty antique prints from this monograph that “Iridescence: John Gould’s Hummingbirds” showcases. The eighty prints in the exhibit are recent acquisitions by the Museum. Dr. Harris smiles as he tells the story of how the prints came to the permanent collection. “John Moore, a collector in Colorado, called me out of the blue and said, ‘I’ve got eighty hummingbird prints by John Gould from the 1800s. Do you want them?’” Harris’ reply? “Yes, we would love them!” “Phone calls like that do not happen every day—you never know who is going to be on the other end of the line. Every once in a while someone calls with something amazing,” Harris says. “A whole exhibit of one artist’s engravings gives you an amazing sense of the artist’s capabilities,” Harris says. The eighty Gould prints on display include the twenty species known to exist in North America at the time Gould’s monograph was printed. Harris says the Gould exhibit and the Photo Ark exhibit “complement each other really well. Both are cataloging projects. One shared knowledge about new species with the public and the other is at the opposite end, trying to bring to light the plight of animals that are in trouble.”
“NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTO ARK: PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOEL SARTORE”” June 10 – August 20 Our conversation with Sartore was so interesting it gets its own article. Read more on page 72.
“EXPLORING WILDLIFE ART” Opens May 16
Robert Bateman (Canadian, b. 1930), Chief, 1997. Acrylic on canvas. 71 x 98 inches. Gift of Birgit and Robert Bateman, National Museum of Wildlife Art. © Robert Bateman.
Gould started work on his five-volume monograph about hummingbirds in 1849 and displayed dozens of stuffed hummingbirds at London’s Great Exhibition in 1851, but he did not see a live hummingbird until May 21, 1857, at Bartram’s Gardens in Philadelphia. Gould tried to bring live hummingbirds back to England with him from this trip, but they all died on the return journey or shortly after arrival.
John Gould (British, 1804-1881). Phaethornis Eremita: Little Hermit. Lithograph in color on wove paper, 21 1/2 x 14 3/8 in. (54.6 x 36.5 cm). This image: Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Estate of Emily Winthrop Miles, 64.98.212.
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The Museum’s curatorial and education departments have been working on the reinstallation of the permanent collection for over a year. Old favorites like Robert Bateman’s Chief haven’t gone away, but have been joined by rarely seen objects and more recent acquisitions. “A main goal of the reinstallation was to bring out some stellar objects that haven’t been on view in a while,” Harris says. For example: a set of c2500 B.C. Native American birdstones, which are the oldest items in the museum’s permanent collection. The reinstallation includes five galleries: Pathways, JKM, Gilcrease, Rungius, and Widener. “We’ve planned the galleries so that visitors can experience them as individual units or as consecutive chapters in an overarching story,” Harris says. Each gallery has its own focus, with a main theme based on the idea of exploration. “People come to Jackson Hole to explore the outdoors and nature and wildlife; we want to tap into that.” For those looking at the new galleries as subsequent chapters, Pathways Gallery, which explores the art and history
of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, is the starting point. “There is some amazing and significant art history that has happened right out our back door,” Harris says. Thomas Moran’s Yellowstone paintings helped convince Congress to create the world’s first national park. This newly installed gallery features two Moran paintings, both from the renowned Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma. One painting is of Mammoth Hot Springs, in the northern part of Yellowstone National Park. The second Moran painting is of the Tetons. Early explorer-artists like Alfred Jacob Miller and Albert Bierstadt traveled to and painted the Wind River Mountains (to the south and east of this valley) but it was decades later that Jackson Hole itself became the subject of serious artistic attention. The valley was so difficult to get to. “Only a handful of artists painted the picturesque eastern slopes of the Tetons before World War II,” Harris says. In the years after the war, the boundaries of Grand Teton National Park were expanded and Jackson Hole began to embrace a tourist economy. “There
2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org 69
2017 EXHIBITS
“My decision to cut all ties with the Old World and to live in America was due in no small part to this first Wyoming trip [1895]. For my heart was in the West.” — Carl Rungius
“TINY: CHARISMATIC MINIFAUNA FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION” October 13, 2017 – April 22, 2018
It’s often megafauna that get the attention, both in real life and on canvas and in bronze. Our Sculpture Trail includes pieces featuring bison and elk. One of the most popular paintings in the permanent collection is Robert Bateman’s Chief. It is of a buffalo. But minifauna—rodents, insects, and amphibians, among other animals—are important in the wild world, and to artists. This exhibit brings together a diverse collection of artwork around a common subject matter: small animals. See William Kuhnert’s finches, parrots, and small falcons and Pablo Picasso’s lizards, insects, and spiders, among other pieces.
“30 WONDERS/30 YEARS: A HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM IN 30 WORKS” October 21, 2017 – April 28, 2018 Georgia O’Keeffe (American, 1887 – 1986), Antelope, 1954. Oil on canvas with Painted Metal Frame. 14 ½ x 32 ¼ inches. This purchase made possible by donations from Sandy Scott and the Widener Charitable Limited Partnership, with additional assistance from Adrienne and John Mars, Anne and John Marion, Ann and Richard O’Leary, Charles D. Miller, Peggy and Lowry Mays, and the Robert S. and Grayce B. Kerr Foundation, National Museum of Wildlife Art. © 2017 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
are a few early paintings of the Tetons,” Harris says, “but the majority of those are from the Idaho side, because that was the easier route.” The Thomas Moran painting of the Tetons in this gallery is the view from the Idaho side. The JKM Gallery considers American art, with an emphasis on the American West. Alongside long-held pieces by Albert Bierstadt, George Catlin, Edward Kemeys, Alexander Pope, Charles M. Russell, and Newell Convers Wyeth is a newly acquired still life by Richard LaBarre Goodwin that had not previously been displayed. (Richard LaBarre Goodwin is not to be confused with Philip Russell Goodwin, a sporting artist who is also featured in the reinstallation). Still Life with Game and Hunting Paraphernalia is the first painting in the Museum’s permanent collection by R. Goodwin, who started his career as a portrait painter in New York but eventually turned to still lifes. This still life is a magnificent example of Goodwin’s favorite subject—game birds hanging on cabin doors. “To have a work of this quality and size to add to our collection of still life paintings is a real coup for the Museum,” says Harris. The Gilcrease Gallery explores European precursors to American wildlife art. “There is this huge tradition of wildlife art in Europe,” Harris says. “We’ve got work by many of the antecedents that influenced what is happening in the world of wildlife art today.” This includes Richard Friese, Wilhelm Kuhnert, Carl Rungius, and Bruno Liljefors. There are also masterworks by Romantic painters like Sir Edwin Landseer,
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Théodore Géricault, Jean-Léon Gérôme, and Rosa Bonheur. Sculptures in this gallery highlight Antoine-Louis Barye, Auguste Rodin, and Rembrandt Bugatti. There’s also Joseph Wolf’s masterpiece Gyrfalcons Striking a Kite. The Museum acquired Gyrfalcons in 2011 and several years later included it in the temporary exhibit “Darwin’s Legacy: The Evolution of Wildlife Art.” Wolf’s painting was appropriate in an exhibit about Charles Darwin because Wolf was not only widely regarded as the finest British animal artist of his time; he was also an illustrator of one of Darwin’s later texts. (Demonstrating the thread that runs through wildlife art, Wolf also did illustrations for John Gould, whose prints of hummingbirds are featured through August 27 in the Museum’s temporary exhibit “Iridescence: John Gould’s Hummingbirds.”) A significant part of the reinstallation, which is the first of the permanent collection since 2005, is the relocation of the Rungius Gallery to make a direct connection from the European collection. “Now, visitors get to go straight from seeing Rungius in context with his European cohort into a gallery that explores his career as one of the most influential wildlife artists of the last century,” Harris says. “Rungius ranks number one in terms of sheer numbers of works of art in our collection. It is not only quantity, but quality and impact that makes him important to us. If you ask almost any wildlife painter today about their influences, Carl Rungius is always high on the list.”
Carl Rungius (American, b. Germany, 1869 – 1959), Wind River Bugler, 1923. Oil on canvas. 30 x 40 inches. JKM Collection®, National Museum of Wildlife Art. © Estate of Carl Rungius.
A hunting trip to Wyoming in 1895 was instrumental in convincing German-born Rungius to immigrate to the U.S. He returned to the Wind River Range almost every summer between his initial visit and 1910. He also visited in 1915. Three Rungius paintings of Wyoming subject matter are scheduled to appear: Wyoming Sage, Wind River Bugler, and At the Head of the Green River. Rungius’s greatest early masterwork, The Stampede, is in the JKM gallery, the gallery considering American art. “At the same time that Rungius was creating his greatest work—in the 30s and 40s—you also have this movement in art called Modernism,” Harris says. “So we have Georgia O’Keeffe, Maynard Dixon, and sculptor Paul Manship depicting wildlife and nature, but based on a different set of criteria.” Work by these artists and others bring us to the Widener Gallery. This gallery displays Dixon’s Eagle’s Roost (on loan to the Nevada Art Museum for the exhibition, “Maynard Dixon: The Paltenghi Collections,” which runs through August 1, 2017), Antelope by Georgia O’Keeffe, and Manship’s Pronghorn Antelope, among other works. Looking at Pronghorn Antelope, it’s easy to see the connection between it and Manship’s gilded, cast bronze sculpture Prometheus in Rockefeller Center. “One of the main goals in almost any installation we do is to broaden people’s ideas of what constitutes wildlife art,” Harris says. “The most often repeated visitor comment is that the breadth and scope of the collection surprises them. I love hearing that.” ■ This reinstallation was made possible through the generous support of Tom and Betsy Grainger, the Whetzel Family Charitable Trust, and The Estate of Jane Griswold Smith.
When the Museum opened in 1987, its marketing materials included the image of a poster of Carl Rungius’ painting Sportsmen’s Moose. Rungius’ painting had originally appeared as a poster in 1907 promoting a sportsmen’s expo. The Museum had a copy of the poster in its collection, but no one knew where the original painting was. In 2012 it was found in the attic of a house on Prince Edward Island, Canada, and, thanks to a gift from the Robert S. and Grayce B. Kerr Foundation, the Museum purchased it. “It is a classic, early Rungius with a great story and clear ties to the Museum,” Harris says. Sportsmen’s Moose is one of the thirty objects in this exhibit that both trace the history of the Museum and represent the diversity of its collection.
“JACKSON COLLECTS: WILD SELECTIONS FROM PRIVATE COLLECTIONS” October 28, 2017 – April 28, 2018
This exhibit showcases the quality and depth of private art collections in Jackson Hole while allowing a glimpse into how the Museum builds its collection. The exhibit includes approximately twenty borrowed works of wildlife and landscape scenes alongside complementary works either recently gifted to or promised to the Museum. Included in the exhibit is Robert Bateman’s painting Harris Hawks, a promised gift to the Museum.
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Wildlife art is critical because it keeps people connected to the idea of nature. People will not save what they don’t love. — Joel Sartore
SHOOTING SPECIES TO SAVE THEM
National Geographic Fellow Joel Sartore has photographed more than 6,500 species of animals for his Photo Ark project. He’s got about 5,500 more to go. 72 2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org
By Dina Mishev
T
he National Museum of Wildlife Art is one of the first institutions outside the National Geographic Museum in Washington D.C. to host images from photographer Joel Sartore’s “Photo Ark.” The exhibit hangs at the Museum from June 10 until August 20. Sartore photographs creatures in zoos and wildlife sanctuaries whose populations are endangered or may become endangered. As of early 2017 he had made portraits of more than 6,500 different species, from African wild dogs to red ruffed lemurs, a harlequin frog, and a cotton-top tamarin. Sartore collaborated with National Geographic to pick the images included in this exhibit. Previously, images from the project have been projected onto the Empire State Building and the UN Building in New York and St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.
Left: Florida Panther (Puma concolor coryi) Lowry Park Zoo, Tampa, Florida Above: A Brazilian porcupine (Coendou prehensilis) Saint Louis Zoo, Missouri
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A favorite place of mine is in the permanent collection where there are paintings from the time of Audubon. There is just something about that era—it was a simpler time. I would love to
Photo by Grahm S. Jones Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Ohio After a photo shoot at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio, a clouded leopard cub climbs on Sartore’s head. The leopards, which live in Asian tropical forests, are illegally hunted for their spotted pelts.
be able to shoot as well as a good painter paints. — Joel Sartore
JOEL SARTORE Q&A COTW: Do you have a favorite animal? JS: I’ve liked the ivory-billed woodpecker since I was a kid. COTW: Most kids have favorite dinosaurs, not birds.
All of the animals Sartore photographs are in zoos or aquariums. “I started at the Lincoln [Nebraska] Children’s Zoo,” Sartore says. “A mile from my house.” Sartore’s wife Kathy had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer and was going through treatment. “During that year I had a chance to sit and think about what I could do that would stick longer than a print story in a magazine that lasts a month,” he says. “From the time I was a kid and learned what we had done to passenger pigeons, I was astounded that humans could kill entire species. I couldn’t understand how anyone would tolerate this. Right now we’re on track to lose half of all species by the turn of the century. It’s a folly to think we can do that and have people be the same.” At the Lincoln Children’s Zoo, and then zoos in Denver and Des Moines—“places I could drive to in my Prius,” he says— Sartore put animals on a black or white studio background. “Black and white levels the playing field. There are no size references.” Sartore says, “The animal does what it does. I take whatever the animal can give me. The shoots aren’t long, especially birds—maybe a couple of minutes. Mainly I’m just looking to get their eyes sharp in focus.” Sartore estimates it will take another 10 to 15 years to finish the project. Around the world, there are about 12,000 species captive. “The goal is to get all of them before I die,” Sartore says. “My goal is to show the world what biodiversity looks like at this point in time and to get people to understand the extinction crisis is serious and that we as humans need other species.” ■ All photographs © Photo by Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark. natgeophotoark.org
JS: My parents cared a lot about birds and we had these Time-Life books, one of which was about birds. It had a section on extinction and a drawing of the ivory-billed woodpecker. I often wonder if I would have been so keen on the ivory-billed woodpecker if it was a common bird. We all want what we can’t have. I think woodpeckers are amazing and every time I see one, I stop and watch it. COTW: How were the several dozen images on exhibit at the Museum this summer selected from the 6,000+ you’ve taken? JS: It was a collaborative effort between myself and National Geographic. The important ones to us were the species that are on the cusp of extinction and also ones that have come back from the cusp. We want people to know this is serious stuff, but that it’s not hopeless. COTW: Has the Photo Ark project helped save any species? JS: The project generated coverage of the decline of the Florida grasshopper sparrow and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service later announced the initiation of a captive breeding program to prevent the species’ extinction. Mostly though it is indirect results we see—increased public awareness of biodiversity.
PHOTO ARK: THE BOOK Published by National Geographic this March, The Photo Ark—One Man’s Quest to Document the World’s Animals is 400 pages of Sartore’s portraits of the world’s animals, from the tiny (the Florida grasshopper sparrow) to the mammoth (the greater one-horned rhinoceros). Harrison Ford, a local and a long-time member of the group Conservation International, wrote the book’s intro and veteran wildlife writer Douglas Chadwick wrote the text accompanying Sartore’s images.
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Left: African White-Bellied Tree Pangolin (Phataginus tricuspis) Pangolin Conservation, St. Augustine, Florida Above: Southern three-banded armadillo (Tolypeutes matacus) Lincoln Children’s Zoo, Nebraska
2017 CALL OF THE WILD / WildlifeArt.org 75
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