February 16 – November 23, 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)