This summer visitors to the National Museum of Wildlife Art (NMWA) can reacquaint themselves with a group of works from the museum’s collection that have been on the road. Wild at Heart: Highlights from the National Museum of Wildlife Art, returned May 22 and is on display through August 15, 2010.
More than 70 works make up the collection, an homage to America’s wild places. Paintings and sculptures are grouped by region (North, South, East and West of America) rather than chronologically. Significant European and American artists are represented, including Albert Bierstadt, William H. Dunton, Bob Kuhn, John Woodhouse Audubon, George Catlin, Charles Russell, Ken Bunn and Carl Rungius.
Artists heralded the power and magnificence of America’s wildlife and wilderness.
“Beginning with explorer-artists and continuing with the best contemporary painters and sculptors working today, wildlife has been a consistent subject in American art,” says National Museum of Wildlife Art Curator of Art Adam Duncan Harris. “We hope that this exhibit helps viewers see the connections between wildlife and art in new ways and prompts further appreciation for the wilderness that remains at the heart of what makes North America exceptional.”
Harris is the author of the recently published book, Wildlife in American Art, which includes many images from the Wild at Heart exhibition.
NMWA’s strong ties with the city of Pittsburgh may have played a role in the exhibition’s premiere at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in the summer of 2006. The exhibit subsequently “toured” the Rockwell Museum in Corning, N.Y., the Vero Beach Museum of Art in Vero Beach, Fla., and the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi.
For information on NMWA’s exhibitions and schedules log onto the Museum’s website, www.wildlifeart.org.
Item #2:
“Artists in the Park” was, I’m told, originally known as “Artists in the Environment.” I’ve known it under the former identity; they are one and the same, however and here is this summer’s (2010) schedule of participating artists:
This coming Saturday, June 12, painter Eliot Goss will be painting from 9am – noon on the shore of String Lake near the main String Lake parking lot, in Grand Teton National Park, weather permitting. The public is invited to view Goss as he works; bring your chairs, water, snacks, sketch books, paints, questions, cameras, whatever strikes your fancy for this summer’s first plein air painting demonstration.
The rest of this summer’s schedule is as follows:
July 10 – Shannon Troxler – Cottonwood Turnout, 9am – noon (first turnout on the right after Taggart/Bradley Lake)
August 14 – Joslyn Slack – Oxbow Bend Turnout, 9am – noon
September 11 – Kathy Wipfler – Chapel of the Transfiguration, 9am – noon
“Artists in the Park” is a great tradition of sharing the plein air process, as well as the special places in GTNP, with the public. Make sure you catch at least one of these exceptional painters this summer. For information, contact Liza Millet at 917-864-9395.
We now return to American Idle……
Now, I must say something—go a little outside my comfort zone—about Jackson’s green marketing blitz.
We’re over- market-greening, risking the individualism we Jackson Holers hold so dear. An overall energy policy for Teton County would set a great standard for counties residing in such special territory. Set standards, legislate for the environment. Just don’t bury me in “green” emails and overtures and solicitations. I know you are green. We’re the green choir, we are. My email box is crammed with solicitations for donations because the asker is “green.” I’m asked to contribute to one green event after another. Everyone seems to be finding ways to weave a green thread through their marketing.
I am pretty green myself. I’m not perfect, but I try. Our marketing is homogenizing, and I cannot tell the difference between recycling centers and hotels and retail stores and restaurants and ANYTHING!!!……I’m often chastised because I still read news printed on paper, and I enjoy reading real books–not flat, tiny iridescent slabs costing hundreds of dollars apiece, soon to be outdated. We’re an army of iPadding, iPodding, crackberry droids. We look silly!
There is, actually, evidence that books are much greener than electronic readers. Every big event promoting initiative costs money and creates a large carbon footprint.
When will one of our leaders take a leap and begin campaigning for JOBS in Jackson? That’s the elephant in our room. We know how to ask one another for money. Can we please confer on how to create jobs that will provide long-term salaried positions in Teton County? Our real estate prices remain among the highest in the country; as sales statistics show only the most expensive properties are seeing some movement. As for the rest of the inventory, it’s reasonable to expect a rebound lagging behind most of the rest of the country, because we are not showing any inclination to nudge asking prices down to an acceptable level in this recession. That means all the real estate based jobs we’ve lost in Teton County will be slow to recoup. And that sector is where a high proportion of salaried jobs have been.
The technology sector is widely viewed as the sector most likely to create jobs for the future. How can we attract that sector to Jackson? There are ways, but I fear that the same single vision for Teton County–a rich county basing income on expensive real estate and tourism–is remaining intact with our political and civic “deciders.”
We’re ever more elitist and controlling; this is the same sort of restraint one finds in country clubs where rules are rigid and there is real trouble if you’re
caught wearing anything but white on the tennis court. PLEASE, Jackson Hole — consider our visitors. Only the wealthiest of the wealthy will be able to afford (and for that matter be attracted to) a destination that has plastered over every sign with green paint.
I don’t want to go for “green drinks.”
We are GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK. We are YELLOWSTONE. We are JACKSON HOLE. We’re losing the ability and will to stand out amongst ourselves, and if it gets blurry for us, it gets blurry for the public at large. I don’t idle my engine, but I hate the idea of a see-all community eye gauging my every errand and measuring my idle index. If I park my car outside in sub-zero Jackson winter weather, it’s going to idle for a while after I get it started before I drive it. Particularly if I don’t have a block heater.
We need JOBS.
I’ll say this too: The Virginian got a raw deal. Talk about stealing a last toehold from the original population of Teton County. The Virginian is one establishment, one eatery and bar, for God’s sake!! We’re arrogant in our persecution of its smoking policy. If you hate smoke, don’t frequent the Virginian. People I know and admire very much support cutting the Virginian off, but their judgement is in error here; a line was crossed. Eventually, possibly as soon as the next generation, the Virginian’s status will evolve because the good people frequenting it will no longer be with us. But leave the Virginian, a vintage (one of the last un-monkeyed with vestiges of Jackson) and salty Western holdout of Jackson Hole, to its own devices. We’re squeezing out the “undesirables.” When will we see the first harassing graffitis sprayed on the doors of those we deem “non-green-compliant?”
We’re an army of drones. Be conscious, but know, too, when your marketing and driving “greenego” © requires an intervention.
Yikes! This mass marketing is so pervasive it’s redundant and …vain. Lead by example, not persecution and retort. Our agendas are proved not by what we proclaim or explain, but by what we do. The action is the measure.
I’m talking here about marketing outside the realm of scientific conservation; NOT about the mission of orgs like the J.H. Conservation Alliance and their sister science and research-based groups. We need to support such organizations in every way we can, keep the pressure on full blast lest we lose the wilderness we’ve managed to save thus far.
I’m a registered Democrat and an independent thinker.
Item #3:
The Art Association holds its Free Art Class Sampler on Thursday, June 10. From 5-6:30 pm the public is invited to the Center for the Arts to get a taste of the many classes offered by the Art Association this summer. Head on up to the third floor studios for an opportunity to get to know a bit more about the large variety of classes offered. Meet the teachers, tours the studios; it’s all FREE. Sign up for a class that night and get a discount–10% off your class cost. For more information, call (307) 733-6379, or log onto www.artassociation.org.
Tammy Christel 
