National Museum of Wildlife Art

Wyoming - Suppose you’re in an art museum admiring George Catlin’s remarkable Native American portraits, when suddenly the artist himself enters the gallery. The buckskin-suited Catlin, surprised to see his works again after nearly 150 years, dramatically recollects the personal encounters that led to the portraits. And as he recalls his life among the native people and the history of the early West, you start to see the paintings, the people in them and the entire world around you in a whole new way.

That astonishing experience happened (thanks to a talented actor) for hundreds of visitors to the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as part of the traveling exhibition, Lure of the West: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. A grant from Monsanto Fund through its Soda Springs plant in southeast Idaho helped the museum stage the two-month show last summer.

Besides presenting opportunities to view rare artwork, Lure of the West and similar exhibitions, plus the museum’s permanent collection, present other equally important opportunities: to teach children about their environment. In fact, science education on behalf of the environment is the Soda Springs plant’s philanthropic theme.

The artwork inside the building offers one way to study the environment. The National Museum of Wildlife Art building itself offers another; it’s an architectural wonder built into a mountainside, overlooking a far-reaching panorama and the National Elk Refuge.

“I know of no other museum where the architecture, the art and the setting are all seamlessly connected,” says museum Director Francine Carraro. “They all come together to promote environmental education in ways that simply are not available anywhere else. Catlin’s portraits were the centerpiece of Lure of the West, which featured paintings and sculpture from the 1820s to 1940s. The works — from famous blockbusters to small but equally breathtaking pieces — depicted wildlife, changing seasons, landscapes, lakes and rivers, thereby providing an excellent springboard for studying the dramatic and dynamic environment of the West.

Pieces from the permanent collection also serve the purpose. For example, a show called “Animals in Winter” vividly illustrates how animals adapt and survive in the severe, mountainous terrain — the real environment just beyond the walls.

“The animals are seen through the artist’s eyes, but that provides enough information for children to look outside at the elk in the preserve and see them lying down to preserve body heat, just like in the painting,” Carraro says. “They can observe real-world events like survival and animal physiology, then view how artists portray them.”

The museum offers a number of environmental classes that start with art. Young children learn about animal environments as they follow a trail of tracks. Older pupils study changing weather patterns through examples in paintings. Others study habitats and landforms through the magnificent work of Western painter Carl Rungius.

For the children of Monsanto’s 600 Soda Springs employees, however, Lure of the West and other exhibits at the National Museum of Wildlife Art have been especially meaningful. In particular, fourth-graders, required to study Idaho history, could put real faces to the names of the Native American leaders they studied in class, thanks to Catlin’s portraits. They could visualize the links between Native Americans, bison and the land, interrelationships that lasted thousands of years. Sixth-graders, as part of Idaho’s science curriculum, observed through artwork the role of wildlife in ecosystems and the harsh realities of the food chain.

The bottom line is, looking at it or learning from it, art is not a passive activity, Carraro says. “Rather, art involves becoming actively engaged and making connections. It all relates to the fact that as a museum, we enrich lives. And that’s an important business.”