Wild at Heart

Wild at Heart: Selections from the National Museum of Wildlife Art

June 15 - August 19, 2007

When the earliest artists created the first works of art on cave walls and cliff faces, they depicted wildlife. The relationship between humans and animals has been drawn and re-drawn by artists from all over the globe ever since. The mission of the National Museum of Wildlife Art is to explore and interpret humanity's relationship with wildlife and nature as it has been expressed in art.

Founded in 1987, the National Museum of Wildlife Art began in a small commercial building on the town square in Jackson, Wyoming. Soon, founding trustees raised enough support to build a breathtaking 51,000 square foot facility that sits just north of town on a bluff overlooking the National Elk Refuge. The museum's collection has grown from an initial gift of 270 works of art to include over 4,000 catalogued items, including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and archival materials. In addition, the collection broadened from an initial focus on wildlife of the American West to include work representing wildlife from all over the globe.

This exhibit features North American wildlife from the United States and Canada painted and sculpted by some of the finest historic and contemporary American artists. It also features work by artists from France, Sweden, and Germany, a testament to the attractive nature of our wilderness areas and wildlife populations to foreigners. Instead of a chronological approach, this exhibit groups the art into different regions, East, West, North, and South, corresponding to areas that have been of particular interest to artists and naturalists over the last century and a half.