The Legacy of Carl Akeley 



by David M. Walsten 



I 



n 1909 Carl Akeley finished mounting the pair of bull 

 elephants in Stanley Field Hall which have come to be 

 recognized as the Field Museum's emblem. He was 45 

 years old, had served Field Museum as chief taxidermist 

 for nearly fourteen years, and was 

 widely known for his innovations 

 in taxidermy and diorama design. 



Now the American Museum 

 came to Akeley with an invitation 

 to collect a similar elephant group 

 for them and prepare the animals 

 for display in their African Hall. 

 Akeley accepted the offer, and for 

 the remaining seventeen years of 

 his life he served the American 

 Museum as collector of speci- 

 mens, taxidermist, and sculptor. 



Though Akeley's departure 

 must have been a difficult loss for 

 the Field Museum, he left behind 

 a cadre of talented proteges who 

 were prepared to carry on his 

 traditions. He had introduced the 

 idea of lifelike poses for animals 

 and had devised better tech- 

 niques for mounting them and 

 preserving their skins. He in- 

 vented a so-called wax-leaf pro- 

 cess for creating scientifically 

 accurate, realistic foliage and had 

 been the first to add painted back- 

 grounds for habitat groups. Total 

 verisimilitude was his goal, and his new dioramas were, 

 in a word, revolutionary. In 1926, just two days before 

 his death in the Belgian Congo, the Field Museum trus- 

 tees acknowledged his contributions by electing him as a 

 patron, an honor then accorded persons who had ren- 

 dered "eminent service" to the institution. 



Carl Akeley was also a highly skilled sculptor; his 

 three bronze life-size castings of native lion hunters and 

 their prey, completed in 1925, may be seen in the African 

 Mammals Hall. (A duplicate set of these bronzes is on 



*Those artists who have created the Museum's murals and painted 

 backgrounds for dioramas will be the subject of an article in a future 

 issue of the Bulletin. 



Carl Akeley with his second wife, Mary (1926) soms 



view in the American Museum of Natural History.) 

 Among Akeley's other sculptures are a dynamic study of 

 three elephants, "The Wounded Comrade" (1913); a 

 life-size bust of a gorilla, "The Old Man of Mikeno" 

 (1923); man emerging from an 

 ape's body — representing man's 

 creation, "Chrysalis" (1924); and 

 a study of a bull elephant, "At 

 Bay" (1925). 



Some five decades after 

 Akeley's departure from Field 

 Museum, activities in taxidermy, 

 plant modeling, and diorama 

 construction gradually wound 

 down, then ceased almost en- 

 tirely; for by then, exhibit space in 

 the halls and galleries was 

 essentially filled. But during that 

 half-century of post-Akeley 

 activity — the golden age of the 

 diorama — his ideals and standards 

 prevailed. A roster of taxidermists 

 and model-makers who served 

 during that period includes some 

 of the most skilled of their time. 

 Several developed their own 

 innovations or were able to 

 improve on Akeley's techniques 

 with new materials provided by 

 the chemical and plastics indus- 

 tries. The 1935 International 

 Exhibition of Taxidermic Art, 

 sponsored by the American Association of Museums, in- 

 cluded among eighty exhibitors the work of eight Field 

 Museum taxidermists: C.J. Albrecht, Julius Friesser, 

 Ashley Hine, Frank Letl, John W. Moyer, Leon Pray, 

 Arthur G. Rueckert, and Leon L. Walters. The following 

 pages offer glimpses of these artist-craftsmen, their col- 

 leagues, and proteges. Accompanying them are sculp- 

 tors whose work has added another aesthetic dimension 

 to the natural history exhibits.* 



The author thanks the following staff members for assistance in 

 researching photos and other archival materials for this article: Mar- 

 cia Carr, Security and Visitor Services; Nina Cummings, Division of 

 Photography; Mary Ann Johnson, archivist; and Alfreida Rehling, 

 Department of Botany. 



