THE UNKNOWN AUDUBONS: MAMMALS OF NORTH AMERICA
ON VIEW AT THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
MARCH 31, 2007 THROUGH JANUARY 18, 2009
ELEGANTLY RESTORED AUDUBON GALLERY SHOWCASES ORIGINAL OIL PAINTINGS,
WATERCOLORS, AND LITHOGRAPHS FROM THE HAND OF JOHN JAMES AUDUBON AND SONS
 Out in the field, John James Audubon traveled with knapsack, gun and dog. This is how his sons John Woodhouse and Victor Gifford—both accomplished artists in their own rights—portrayed him in this oil portrait. © Denis Finnin/AMNHThe American Museum of Natural History announces that the renovated and restored Audubon Gallery, a classic, high-ceilinged salon space on the Museum's fourth floor next to the fossil halls, re-opened its doors to the public for the first time in decades on March 31, 2007. As the inaugural exhibition in this historic gallery, the Museum is opening The Unknown Audubons: Mammals of North America, a presentation that highlights the Museum's rarely displayed collection of original paintings, drawings, and prints by John James Audubon and his sons John Woodhouse Audubon and Victor Gifford Audubon, one of America's most famous families of naturalists and wildlife artists. The exhibition also succeeds in placing Audubon's life and art in the context of a dramatic environmental story—protecting endangered ecosystems—a cautionary scientific message addressed in other Museum galleries, particularly the Hall of Biodiversity.
"We are thrilled to unveil the newly restored Audubon Gallery as it finally takes its place alongside the other magnificent permanent exhibition halls at the Museum," said Ellen V. Futter, President of the Museum. "This grand space, now restored to its original elegance, will be dedicated to exhibitions that exemplify the view that art and science are prisms through which we examine the beauty of the natural world and endeavor to understand our place within it."
 Watercolor of Swift Fox (Vulpes velox) painted by John James Audubon for his Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America.© Denis Finnin/AMNHThe 3,100-square-foot Audubon Gallery has been painstakingly refurbished and provides a setting almost as stunningly dramatic as the art on display. Dark double doors open to an elegant salon-style hall, with high, white, coffered ceilings graced by eight inverted bowl lamps, trimmed with metal silhouettes of terns in flight. The warm wood inner doors, moldings, and wainscoting have been refinished and the walls covered in cream linen. New lighting also subtly complements the room's architectural details, which include magnificent marble door moldings.
The Unknown Audubons: Mammals of North America (also opening March 31 and on view until January 18, 2009) introduces visitors to an unfamiliar side of Audubon and his family. Most identify him with his monumental and groundbreaking work, the 435-plate Birds of America (1827–1838), and even today his name remains synonymous with birds and bird conservation. However, soon after the publication of Birds of America, Audubon decided to pursue an even more challenging project—the documentation of all known North American mammals—an ambitious undertaking that included a six-month expedition to the Missouri River valley in 1843.
 John James Audubon painted this watercolor of a Canadian Lynx (Lynx canadensis) from a live animal in 1842 for his Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America.© Denis Finnin/AMNHThe new exhibition recounts this project and features more than 50 vivid depictions of mammals, including oils, watercolors, and hand-colored lithographs. These images are at the heart of Audubon's last great work, the three-volume Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (1845–1848), completed with the help of his sons, Victor Gifford Audubon and John Woodhouse Audubon, and written mostly by Audubon's longtime friend, the naturalist and Lutheran minister John Bachman. The Museum's Audubon collection as a whole has rarely been on public view.
 This original oil painting of a coyote (Canis latrans)—identified as a "Prairie Wolf" in Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America—was done by Audubon's son, John Woodhouse Audubon.© Denis Finnin/AMNHIn addition to spectacular paintings of mammals, including raccoons, porcupines, wolves, and black bears, the exhibition also presents a timely ecological message. Using Audubon's sketches, paintings, and journal entries, as well as mammal specimens from the Museum's collections, the exhibition documents the virtually complete loss of the prairie grasslands—the largest ecosystem in North America. On the Missouri River expedition in 1843, Audubon found himself at the beginning of the transformation of the American heartland. The prairie was being converted to towns and farmland, and the commercial exploitation and slaughter of the buffalo had begun. John James Audubon is our witness to this transformation—the wildlife he went west to document was starting to disappear. Today, less than 1 percent of this landscape remains unchanged by human activity. The exhibition will show visitors what that ecosystem was like, what has been lost, and why.
"A major focus of the exhibition will be the environmental transformation of the Missouri River country as seen through Audubon's eyes, art, and words," said Joel Cracraft, Lamont Curator and Curator-in-Charge, Department of Ornithology, and the co-curator for Unknown Audubons. "The exhibit will tell an environmental story that all Americans should know and understand. The visitor will emerge not only with a picture of how a vast part of America was transformed and continues to be transformed, but also with a deeper understanding of Audubon and his art."
 Handcolored lithograph of an American Black Bear (Ursus americanus) from Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. Audubon's masterpiece was one of the first books of its size and quality to be printed by lithography in the United States, a relatively new printing process that was starting to replace copperplate engraving as the standard for illustrated books.© Denis Finnin/AMNHA few years after returning from "this grand and Last Journey" out west, Audubon suffered a debilitating stroke and died in 1851. In the end, John Woodhouse Audubon continued his father's great work and illustrated nearly half the species in The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. Several of his original oil canvases are on display in the exhibition, including paintings of cougars, long-tailed deer, and the Mexican marmot-squirrel. The book was well-received and the Audubons' portrait of our wildlife as it was in the mid-1800s remains, as one critic of the day observed, a "Great National Work, originated and completed among us."
Visitors can see many of the same animal species the Audubon family observed during their travels in the Museum's world-renowned habitat dioramas in the Hall of North American Mammals and the adjacent Small North American Mammal corridor. Many of the Museum's best-known and iconic displays are featured in these halls including the Alaska Brown Bear, Mountain Lion, Alaska Moose, and the Bison and Pronghorn Antelope. The Museum's dioramas, superb examples of art in the service of science, provide a powerful illusion that has shaped an understanding and appreciation of the real natural world for millions of Museum visitors.
Exhibition Organization
The Unknown Audubons: Mammals of North America is co-curated by Joel Cracraft, Lamont Curator and Curator-in-Charge, Department of Ornithology, and Mary LeCroy, Research Associate, Department of Ornithology. The Unknown Audubons is designed and produced by the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Exhibition, under the direction of David Harvey, Vice President for Exhibition.
 Watercolor of North American Porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum) painted by John James Audubon in 1842.© Denis Finnin/AMNHA Brief History of the Audubon Gallery
The original gallery was designed in the 1930s by the architectural firm Trowbridge and Livingston, best known for its 1935 plan for the then brand-new Hayden Planetarium, as well as such New York landmarks as the B. Altman Building and the St. Regis Hotel. According to Ms. LeCroy, the gallery opened to the public on June 6, 1939, as a place to showcase the impressive works of bird art the Museum had collected over the years, including a trove of fine John James Audubon paintings and memorabilia entrusted to the Museum in 1905 and 1925 by two of his granddaughters. However, the gallery space closed soon after the start of World War II and kept its doors shut to the public (with rare exceptions for limited viewings) for the next 65 years. During that time, the gallery was mostly used for private Museum functions and displayed the works of Audubon and such celebrated wildlife painters as Louis Agassiz Fuertes, Joseph Wolf, and Francis Lee Jaques in classic salon style. Located behind the heavy wooden doors and fabric-covered walls are the offices of scientists working in the Department of Ornithology and back stairways leading to the Museum's renowned collections of bird specimens, nests, and eggs.
Photography Exhibitions Archive
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