The Buffalo Bill Center of the West has loaned four significant paintings to the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming, to augment two special exhibitions showcasing Carl Rungius. The year 2019 is the 150th anniversary of wildlife painter Rungius’s birth, and the National Museum of Wildlife Art celebrates the milestone with dual exhibitions of the artist’s works. Together titled Rungius Sesquicentennial, the exhibitions are on view May 4–August 25, 2019.
Rungius Reunited
Rungius Reunited, one of the two exhibitions, brings back together eight large Rungius paintings that once hung in Jackson Lake Lodge. Today, reproductions of those paintings adorn the upper walls of the main lobby at the lodge. In 1992, four of the original paintings were given to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West where they are now part of the Whitney Western Art Museum’s collections. Depicting a grizzly bear, wolverine, bighorn sheep, and mule deer, the paintings are now on loan for the duration of the Rungius Reunited exhibition.
The exhibition traces the fascinating story, spanning the 20th century, of how these paintings made their way from the Bronx Zoo in the early 1900s, to the Jackson Lake Lodge in the 1960s, to the two main museums flanking Grand Teton National Park at the end of the century.
The second of these two special exhibitions, Rarely Seen Rungius, features works from the National Museum of Wildlife Art’s permanent collection. These include watercolors, drypoint prints, landscape studies, and archival materials that are rarely on view. The nuseum holds the only known complete collection of Rungius engravings, the rarest of which will be displayed in Rarely Seen Rungius.
To learn more about the National Museum of Wildlife Art’s Rungius celebration, click here.
The Rungius Sesquicentennial exhibitions are generously sponsored by Thomas & Elizabeth Grainger, Gloria & Bill Newton, Anne & Michael Moran, and Tally & Bill Mingst.
