The
Greatest Bird Artists:
John James Audubon and Earl Poole
February
16 – July 6, 2008
 An
exhibition worth watching, The Greatest
Bird Artists: John James Audubon and Earl
Poole includes work from the Museum’s
permanent collection, featuring two of America’s
greatest wildlife artists.
John
James Audubon’s Birds of America
remains one of the unsurpassed achievements
in American art. Over a twelve-year period
(1826-1838), Audubon succeeded in publishing
the largest, most complex printed work the
world had yet produced, called by some art
historians the most beautiful book ever
published. Included are life-sized portraits
of 1,035 birds of 435 species engraved and
hand-colored on sheets approximately two
by three feet, This exhibition includes
two newly restored prints owned by the Museum
from the original edition.
 These
Audubon prints were purchased for the Museum
in 1952 by Earl Lincoln Poole, the second
director of the Reading Public Museum. The
Museum's founder and first director, Levi
W. Mengel, was the first to systematically
document the bird life of Berks County,
and brought Poole to Berks County in 1915.
Poole, a wildlife artist and naturalist
in his own right, established a reputation
as one of America’s leading ornithological
artists, notable for his mastery of accurate
anatomical details. In 1947, he published
A Half Century of Bird Life in Berks
County, Pennsylvania, followed by a
supplement in 1954. The exhibit features
works by Poole in a variety of media, including
watercolor and oil.
This exhibition is part of a joint project
entitled, Wings of Spring: A
Celebration of Our Natural World,
co-sponsored by the Reading Public Museum,
the Berks County Conservancy, GoggleWorks,
RiverPlace and Hawk Mountain Sanctuary,
scheduled for the spring of 2008. The Museum's
portion is underwritten in part by grants
from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum
Commission and the Pennsylvania Council
on the Arts.
This
exhibition is underwritten in part by the
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
Images,
top to bottom: Robert Havell, Jr.
after John James Audubon, Carolina Parrot,
Plate 26, Anglo American, 1793-1878, hand-colored
engraving with aquatint, Museum purchase;
Earl Lincoln Poole, Long-eared Owl,
American, 1891-1972, watercolor, Museum
purchase
Click
here to hear WEEU's "Jack's Backyard"
host, Jack Holcomb, discuss this exhibition
with Mike Anderson, Museum PR/Marketing
Director. (mp3)
To
download the press release, click
here.
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