Why? According to William Beebe, why was “the question which makes all science worthwhile.” Why, for instance, do tinamous of the genus Tinamus have rough skin on their lower legs while tinamous of the genus Crypturus have smooth skin? Why do hoatzin populations seem to gather in nodes rather than being found throughout tropical forests?
We are so pleased to announce that we have received a grant from the New York State Program for the Conservation and Preservation of Library Research Materials to rehouse photographic negatives dating back to the founding of the Bronx Zoo and the New York Aquarium.
The $16,674 grant will enable us to rehouse glass plate and film negatives that would otherwise be susceptible to damage and deterioration. The images, dating from the Bronx Zoo’s founding in 1899 through approximately 1930, will be cleaned and properly rehoused for long-term preservation. Although the entire collection requires rehousing, this project focuses on the first 12,000 negatives in the collection of more than 70,000.
Three-toed sloth at the Bronx Zoo around 1907. WCS Photo Collection
For more on the grant and additional images from the collection, please see the WCS Newsroom, and we look forward to sharing news about the project as it progresses!
We are very pleased to report that we have received a Preservation Assistant Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities! This grant will support a general preservation assessment of the WCS Archives film collection, which contains approximately 2,200 film prints created by WCS zoo, aquarium, and field conservation staff over the twentieth century. A preservation consultant will conduct a formal assessment of the film collection and its storage environment in order to inform the Archives’ goals of creating a sustainable preservation plan for the collection and making it accessible.The assessment will support the Archives’ future ability to budget and plan for the collection’s rehousing and stabilization and determine options for the collection’s future accessibility.
We look forward to keeping you updated as the assessment gets underway this year!
For more on the NEH’s recent awards announcement, see here.
Theodore Roosevelt, who was born 157 years ago today, provided WCS with the gifts of great moral and political support in the organization’s early years. It was Roosevelt who appointed the committee of Boone and Crockett Club members who eventually founded the New York Zoological Society. Roosevelt also endorsed the formation of the American Bison Society and served as its first honorary president. And he spoke out in support of Bronx Zoo Director William T. Hornaday’s (in the end unsuccessful) 1915 campaign to increase wildlife sanctuaries in national forests. Continue reading
We’re pleased to report that more of our materials are now available online–specifically some fun Bronx Zoo and New York Aquarium ephemera from our Publications and Printed Ephemera collection. Thanks to the excellent Culture in Transit Program, we now have 112 additional items up at METRO’s Digital Culture of Metropolitan New York site. This is a fraction of this large and always growing collection, and we hope to add more in the coming years. Continue reading
Throughout the Bronx Zoo’s history, it has been common to receive letters from people wanting to donate animals. However, in 1901, the Zoo received a letter from a not-so-common person: Continue reading
Thirty years ago today, the Bronx Zoo’s JungleWorld exhibit opened to the public. Posed in the 1985 NYZS Annual Report as an “experiment” that built upon decades of innovations in zoogeographic exhibition, JungleWorld sought to break new ground in wild animal care and exhibition, and it was widely considered the most ambitious indoor zoological environment ever created at the time. Continue reading
Image of Helen Martini with baby panther in her Bronx apartment, circa 1940s. Scanned from WCS Photo Collection
Today marks what would have been Helen Martini’s 103rd birthday. For more on her and on this great photo, check out WCS’s Photo Blog, Wild View.
This post was written by Kimio Honda, Studio Manager in WCS’s Exhibition and Graphic Arts Department.
My interest in the Bronx Zoo and the New York Zoological Society goes back to my teenage years in Japan. When I was transferred to New York for my work, I got to know some people at the zoo. Many years later I started working at the Exhibition and Graphic Arts Department (known around here as EGAD). As a result, I have had a chance to know more intimately the works of art around our parks and to hear some interesting stories. Continue reading
With the New York Aquarium preparing for a major transformation of its facilities at Coney Island—centering around a new 50,000 square foot Ocean Wonders: Sharks! exhibit—I took special note while flipping through a 1915 issue of the New York Zoological Society Bulletin recently of an article entitled “The Aquarium of Our Dreams.”