James L. Clark exhibitions working files

Physical Description: This collection includes photographs, handwritten notes, clipped and printed images, and related captions from periodicals, mounted on 10”X14” thick pieces of cardboard. These large cards were used in the preparation and installation of various permanent and temporary exhibitions at the American Museum of Natural History. The exhibitions included the African, Asian, and North American Halls of Mammals, the Whitney Memorial Hall of Oceanic (Pacific) Birds, the Sanford Hall of North American Birds—which was previously referred to as the Chapman Hall of North American Birds and later as the Sanford Hall of Bird Biology—the Hall of Ecology, the Hall of Landscape, and the Hall of North American Forests—which was previously referred to as the Forestry Hall and now encompasses the former Warburg Memorial Hall. A few of these exhibition halls, such as the Whitney Memorial Hall of Oceanic (Pacific) Birds, the Sanford Hall of Bird Biology, the Chapman Hall of North American Birds, the Forestry Hall, and the Warburg Memorial Hall, are now closed. For more information on Clark’s own account of creating the North American hall of mammals, you can also read “Recreating the American Wilderness”, Natural History, from Vol. 40, Dec 1937, 748-52.

Some of the cardboard files and photographs have handwritten notes inscribed by James L. Clark himself as well as by other museum staff members. Some of the photographs, which have since separated from their mounted boards, include additional information on their reverse sides, attributing the photographer, the institution and agencies from which these images were commissioned, as well as the places where they were presented. Photographs that were found at the bottom of the original filing cabinets and could not be identified have been placed in the general folder related to the particular series.