Water Hole main content.

Water Hole

Part of Hall of African Mammals.

The Museum's Watering Hole diorama with giraffes and gazelles in the foreground, and a painting of a dry flat plain with other animals and a mountain rising in the distant background.

A favorite among Museum visitors, the Water Hole diorama teems with wildlife in search of water in the Guaso Nyiro River Valley in Kenya. Spot the giraffes, Grévy's zebra, Beisa oryx, Grant's gazelle, the olive baboon, and herds of elephants.

The palm tree behind the bull giraffe is the first painting by prolific Museum artist James Perry Wilson. Wilson devised an ingenious grid system for translating flat photos and sketches into undistorted landscapes on the curved diorama walls.