CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Art and science intersect at the Field Museum's newest exhibit, which focuses on prominent naturalist John James Audubon — while shedding light on his history as a slave-owner and anti-abolitionist.
As visitors enter the exhibit, “Birds of America,” the immediate effect is being transported to a bird lover’s paradise, surrounded with birdsong, photos and drawings. The focal point being Audubon’s famous book — the namesake for the exhibition.
“A copy of … what's called the ‘double-elephant folio’ that Audubon did, tried to [include] all of the birds known at the time in the Americas,” said Doug Stotz, a senior conservation ecologist at the Field Museum. “He made it enormous, so that they could be basically life-size and enable him to put a tremendous amount of detail in them.”
The artistic detail Audubon took with his illustrations was new at the time of the book’s publishing, Stotz said. In all, the drawings exceed 400 works of art.
Stotz added, though, that it was important for the museum not to shy away from Audubon’s problematic legacy with its “Birds of America” exhibit.
“I think it's important to understand just how revolutionary — from an artistic and naturalist standpoint — he was,” Stotz said. “But also understand that he was a deeply flawed man, and those two things are not mutually exclusive."
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