The Elephant Herd
Carl Akeley and museum taxidermists (Akeley 1864 to 1926) · Hall opened 1936
In the middle of a dim, two storey hall a herd of eight African elephants strides forward on a raised platform, trunks raised, ears spread, as if alarmed by something you cannot see. They are surrounded on both levels by twenty eight illuminated windows, each a diorama showing a scene of African wildlife with painted backgrounds, real foliage and animals mounted in the middle of some ordinary moment: gorillas in the misty Virunga volcanoes, lions at a waterhole, a rhinoceros on a plain at dawn. The hall is one of the great artistic achievements of the museum.
The elephants were prepared under the direction of Carl Akeley, who transformed taxidermy from stuffing skins into a form of sculpture. He built each animal as a clay model over an accurate skeleton, cast it in plaster and covered it with the tanned skin, so that the muscles and wrinkles fall exactly where they should. Look at the tension in the leading bull's trunk and the way the calves press close to the cows. Akeley also insisted that the dioramas show real places, and their painters travelled to Africa to record the light and the horizon of each site.
Akeley died of fever in the Congo in 1926 while collecting for the gorilla diorama, and the hall was finished by his colleagues and opened ten years later. He had been a hunter who came to believe that the animals he pursued needed protection, and he helped persuade Belgium to create Africa's first national park for the mountain gorillas. The hall was conceived as a record of a world he feared would disappear.
Did You Know? Akeley is buried on the slopes of Mount Mikeno in the Congo, within sight of the gorilla habitat shown in one of the dioramas.
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