Exhibit : Endangered Species - Flora and Fauna in Peril

Endangered Species is a juried art competition and museum exhibition designed to recognize, promote, and reward excellence among outstanding contemporary artists, and to heighten public attention and awareness about endangered and threatened flora and fauna. The competition, which will be juried by a panel of experts, will culminate in an exhibition at the Museum in Los Olivos California, in the summer of 2008. The exhibition is tentatively scheduled (pending final confirmation) to travel to the U.S. Department of the Interior Museum in Washington D.C. (Nov. 1, 2008-Feb. 28, 2009) and to The Wildlife Experience in Parker, Colorado (May 9-July 12, 2009).

Open to any artist living in the United States or abroad, submittals can depict any species of flora or fauna that is identified by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as threatened or endangered in North America (consult www.fws.gov/endangered). Works, limited to two per artist, must be submitted as 35mm slides or digital images on CD. A first place cash prize of $10,000 will be awarded; second place is $5000 and the third is $2000.  Entries that are accepted for the exhibition will be reproduced in a full-color catalogue. Jurors are Dr. J. Patrick Kociolek, Curator at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco; Amy Scott, Curator  of Visual Arts, Autry National Center, Museum of the American West, Los Angeles; Hunter Hollins, Chief Curator U.S. Department of the Interior Washington, DC, and Karen Sinsheimer, Curator of Photography, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Dr. David J. Wagner, Curator/Tour Manager for the Society of Animal Artists, is the consulting curator.

The Wildling Art Museum is dedicated to presenting the art of America’s wilderness. The purpose of the Museum’s art competition is to recognize, promote and reward excellence among outstanding contemporary artists and to heighten public attention and awareness about endangered and threatened flora and fauna. The Museum organizes and displays four exhibitions annually with landscape, wildlife, and botanical illustration as some of its themes. This is the first juried exhibition that it has organized. Dr. David J. Wagner, Curator/Tour Director for the Society of Animal Artists, is the consulting curator. The U. S. Endangered Species Conservation Act of Fish and Wildlife of 1969 is considered by many the most significant legislation to come out of the environmental movement. This legislation, re-enforced and expanded in the Endangered Species Act of 1973, provides for the “conservation, restoration, propagation, and protection of selected species of fish and wildlife, including migratory birds, that are threatened with extinction,” as well as flora and invertebrates, and it defined endangered species “as any species that is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range.”

Location : Wildling Art Museum.

Date : June 22, through September 14, 2008.

Time : Wednesday - Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Tickets : Suggested donation: $2.00.