Stephen C. Quinn, senior project manager in the Museum’s Department of Exhibition, recently traveled to the eastern Congo basin to visit the exact site depicted in the Akeley Hall of African Mammals’ mountain gorilla diorama which is based on paintings, photographs, and specimens collected in the field by explorer and taxidermist Carl Akeley and his team in 1921 and 1926.
Like the artists on Akeley’s 1926 expedition, Quinn used field sketches and paintings to document the area’s flora and fauna, recording the changes that have taken place and reinforcing the important role artists play in habitat conservation and environmental education. In this eight-minute highlight video from a recent talk at the Museum, Quinn shares finished works, including a panoramic plein air painting.
Watch the video, which includes footage from the field, here:
Each of the 28 extraordinary dioramas in the Akeley Hall of African Mammals offers visitors a chance to travel not just in space but in time. The views are of specific habitats at particular moments, painstakingly recreated from paintings, photographs, data, and specimens collected in the field by the explorer and taxidermist Carl Akeley and his team on expeditions in the 1920s.
Last fall, Stephen C. Quinn — artist, naturalist, and senior project manager in the Department of Exhibition at the Museum — headed to the Congo on a journey that retraced an expedition Akeley made in 1926. His aim: to find the site depicted in the famous mountain gorilla diorama and, in the tradition of the artists who accompanied Akeley, to produce a painting to record the area’s flora and fauna some 80 years after the scene was first documented for the Museum. His extraordinary trip was recently featured in The New York Times.
There’s no better way to celebrate fall than to observe bird migration on an eight-week series of walks through Central Park with Museum naturalists Stephen C. Quinn, Joseph DiCostanzo, and Harold Feinberg. Leading groups of up to 25 birders, these experienced tour guides teach participants to use field marks, habitat, behavior, and song to identify birds. Check out a video of a bird walk led by Stephen Quinn below.
