Just in Time for Thanksgiving: A New APP Exhibit With the Gallant Wild Turkey as the Lead
No one wants to get up close and personal with a real Wild Turkey. But starting today, the offers an appealing alternative: a chance for visitors to pore over John James APP’s life-sized watercolorof the bird. The stately fowl dedicated to the Birds of America, acollection of 435 jumbopaintings hand-crafted by APP in the 1800s. (The bookhas since been reprinted countless times.) Every month, the historical society will feature a new display centered around the next page in the series, for a total run time of36 years and 3months.
As each new bird takes center stage, the curatorwill complement it with relatedsketches, documents, and artifacts.Luckily, the New-York Historical Society has enough accessories to keep things fresh through 400-plus redesigns: Its collection of APP paraphernalia, known as“APPiana,”is the largest in the world.Not only does it own every original watercolor fromBirds of America, italso has theengravings—orplates—of each illustration, which were used to reproduce APP’s work for wealthy artcollectors.
Despite the daunting workload, Roberta Olson, the curator of drawings at the New-York Historical Society, is excited to design such a long-lived exhibit. "It’s been my dream for a very long time,"she says. The idea first came to her as a visiting curatorin 1989, and she's been aiming to make it a realitysince she became a curator the following year.
The resulting experience is as intimate as Olson intended. The exhibit room is a former storage room that the museum gutted and renovated specifically for the display. Atthe center,in a specially designed case, lies volume oneofBirds of America, open to the featured bird's folio. The subjectis also animated by itssongs andcalls, which play in the background, courtesy of the . Combine that with the dim lighting—the paintings are too sensitive to sustain anything harsher—and you've got yourself a soliddate spot, perfect for peeking into after a walk through Central Park.
Theimmersive nature of the exhibit is also meant to make visitors think deeply about conservation, just as APP did. The display on theWild Turkey, for instance, includes notes about the North American population'sups and downsover the years. Later, informative displays will drive home the loss ofextinct species like the Carolina Parakeet.“Those will have all kinds of bells and whistles going off,” Olson says.
Back in the 1800s, people learned to appreciate the beauty and needs ofAmerican birds byfawningover APP's vivid images. “He really hooked people,” Olson says. She hopes that if the naturalist could do it then, he can still do it today, tomorrow, and for the next 36-plus years.
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