American Museum of Natural History Research Library
author: American Museum of Natural History

American Museum of Natural History. Bird Art Gallery.; Gallery of Bird Paintings; Whitney Gallery of Bird Art; Gallery of Bird Art; Bird Art Gallery
birth: 1939
death: 1953
Permanent exhibition. Opened June 6, 1939 and closed approximately 1949-1953. Located on Floor 4, Section 19. The Bird Art Gallery at the American Museum of Natural History exhibited paintings of birds. It was part of three halls in the Whitney Wing, which formally opened to the public on June 6, 1939 and included the Sanford Memorial Hall of the Biology of Birds and the Whitney Memorial Hall of Oceanic Birds (1, 1939, p. 8).
The Gallery included paintings by Louis Agassiz Fuertes, Joseph Wolf, and original plates from ornithological monographs by Daniel Giraud Elliot. The gallery displayed two large oil paintings from the Museum’s collection of Audubonia, one by John James Audubon showing a dog surprising pheasants and another by his sons Victor and John Woodhouse Audubon. The rest of the Audubonia paintings were exhibited in the fourth floor ambulatory of the Roosevelt Memorial immediately adjoining (1, 1938, p. 2; 2, 1939, p. 85).
The section (Q) of the fourth floor where the Bird Art Gallery was housed appears in General Guides in the 1950’s, but the space is not identified as a functioning hall. The last time the Bird Art Gallery is named as a public hall is the 1949 General Guide (2, 1949, p. 19).