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Announcing Dr. Adam Duncan Harris as the Grainger/Kerr Director of the Carl Rungius Catalogue Raisonné

February 24, 2020

Monday, February 24, 2020

 

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WILDLIFE ART APPOINTS DR. ADAM HARRIS AS GRAINGER/KERR DIRECTOR OF THE CARL RUNGIUS CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ

Jackson, WY The National Museum of Wildlife Art of the United States is proud to announce the appointment of Dr. Adam Duncan Harris as the Grainger/Kerr Director of the Carl Rungius Catalogue Raisonné. This new position and initiative will create a complete catalogue of all of Rungius’s finished paintings. Harris will devote his full time to the raisonné, as the Museum considers an interim Curator of Art.

According to Harris, “A raisonné is an extensive undertaking and I consider it a distinct honor to have been selected to perform the work. After years of working with the Rungius pieces, whose works make up the largest number of pieces in the permanent collection at the Museum, I am prepared-and excited-to take this next step in my profession.”

Carl Rungius (American, born Germany, 1869-1959) is widely regarded as North America’s premier wildlife painter. Working primarily in the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming and Alberta, Canada he spent every summer painting and sketching in the high country and every winter in New York City, creating finished canvases that celebrate the outdoors, nature, and wildlife. The National Museum of Wildlife Art holds the largest collection of Rungius’s work in the United States and is launching this major, multi-year project, which will culminate in a published Rungius Masterworks book, touring exhibition, and online resource.

Harris has been Chief Curator at the Museum since 2000. He is the author of Wildlife in American Art: Masterworks from the National Museum of Wildlife Art (2009) and editor of the award-winning Bob Kuhn: Drawing on Instinct (2012), both published by the University of Oklahoma Press. In 2013, Harris curated a touring exhibition in conjunction with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, titled George Catlin’s American Buffalo (2013), which featured a full-color catalogue with essay. He also organized the touring exhibition Harmless Hunter: The Wildlife Work of Charles M. Russell (2014). Most recently he contributed to Tucker Smith: A Celebration of Nature exhibition which opens in Jackson, Wyoming on May 23, 2020. The exhibition then tours nationally to museums in four other states.

 

The National Museum of Wildlife Art, a nonprofit founded in 1987, is a world-class art Museum holding more than 5,000 artworks representing wild animals from around the world. Featuring work by prominent artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Robert Kuhn, John James Audubon, and Carl Rungius, the Museum’s unsurpassed permanent collection chronicles much of the history of wildlife in art, from 2500 B.C. to the present. Built into a hillside overlooking the National Elk Refuge, the Museum received the designation “National Museum of Wildlife Art of the United States” by order of Congress in 2008. Boasting a Museum Shop, interactive children’s gallery, restaurant, and outdoor sculpture trail, the museum is only two-and-a-half miles north of Jackson Town Square, and two miles from the gateway of Grand Teton National Park.

 

www.WildlifeArt.org
IMAGES AND INTERVIEWS AVAILABLE ON REQUEST

Media Contact:

Steve Seamons, Museum Director, (307)732-5416, sseamons@wildlifeart.org

Dick Beck, Chairman, (307)690-8654, dbeck@wildlifeart.org

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