Emily: We're undergoing some massive changes here at the Field Museum in the next year
thanks to a generous donation from the Kenneth C. Griffin charitable fund. Among other things,
we're relocating and updating the pose of our star T. Rex Sue to reflect new research on these animals.
T. Rexes have a set of belly ribs called Gastralia
but nobody could quite figure out how they were supposed to
articulate with the rest of the skeleton.
Now we know, so instead of looking like this, we think T.
Rexes looked a little bit more like this. And that got me thinking a lot about how
important art is to our understanding of prehistoric life
as well as the artists who have worked here at the Field Museum over the years.
But digging up information about our past artists in Geology was no simple feat.
I contacted partner museums from around the United States and Europe,
sought out family members of the artists, and scoured our archives for information and personnel
records. I made use of more interlibrary
loan requests than any other time in my life. The work from these artists touched millions of people yet the
Information about two of the three was virtually unknown
and I wanted to change that. So without further ado, I bring you the Field Museum's
artists of prehistory.
One of the first prehistoric artists the field museum hired was Charles Knight. He's also by far
the best known. Numerous books and galleries have been devoted to his life's work and talents.
Part of the realism in his studies came from his observations of animals in life.
He spent a lot of time at zoos observing and drawing the animals. And when it came to painting the prehistoric,
Knight went to great lengths to create
three-dimensional models of his subjects, which he then would take outside
to see how the sunlight played off of their features. Between
1927 and 1931, Knight was commissioned by the Field Museum to create 28
gigantic murals to chronicle life on Earth, which would line the walls in our new Hall of Fossil Vertebrates.
They've become his most iconic series with a few standouts like T-rex vs Triceratops,
which inspired numerous
artists and filmmakers at the time.
Like the Lost World and the scene in Fantasia where the T-rex was going after the Stegosaurus,
even though they lived 84 million years apart...
But anyway, one of the most incredible things about Knight's literally
massive accomplishments was that he was legally blind. When he was six.
He was hit in one eye with rock
sustaining permanent corneal damage and later developed an astigmatism
in the other. So the murals for The Field were completed with his left eye just
inches from the canvas.
But what I love about nights paintings is how he was able to
artfully convey the passage of time
the majority of his works are still on display in our evolving planet exhibition
And if you look at the murals in sequence ranging from the oldest scenes
to the newest you'll notice that the image has become clearer
over time, the more ancient the subject that hazier the memory until everything comes into sharp focus
with bolder colors in the Pleistocene. Among knights admires was author
Ray Bradbury who said when we think of these
beasts, these monsters that lived in the world for so many
hundreds of thousands of years, and then vanished, and we think we're going to be here for a long time
Well if the dinosaurs could vanish from the world we have to be careful with ourselves
But when you do excellent things you live forever so the work that Charles R. Knight did it's there forever
And it's going to stay forever. Knight was followed by two other artists
who were ultimately much less recognized
But similarly talented each with their own unique
personal story and style the first was John Conrad
Hansen who was chronically shy
and somewhat of an enigma. Having immigrated to the United States from Trondheim, Norway,
when he was just 12, he lived with his mother in Minneapolis until her death in
1928, when he was 59. In the following years he moved around
eventually making his way to Chicago where he worked for a calendar company
And painted church altar pieces. Then at an age when most people are settling into retirement
Hansen decided on a second career. He contacted The Field in 1940 and was hired as an artist when he was
71 and what's truly intriguing about his role of paleo artist
is that he didn't believe these extinct creatures had lived. Hansen's religious
convictions and his belief in the great Biblical Flood didn't mesh with the animals
he was painting here
And so he referred to them simply as the objects. In spite of that his imagination
in depicting ancient animals was
World-class and many of his paintings hung with the articulated skeletons in the fossil Hall for many years
He worked for the field until a month before his death in 1952 at the age of 84
Shortly before Conrad Hansen's death another artist was hired by the geology
department. Maidi Wiebe was born in Germany in 1922,
but not much about her early life is known even to her family
she grew up during the most vicious years of World War II and
undoubtedly was impacted by the experience. While her family certainly endured hardships,
they were lucky to be German, she was able to pursue an university education in Poland in
1943 but was interrupted toward the end of the war as the Soviet Army
approached their town. Maidi and her family were
evacuated with other German refugees and after the war in 1946 she reenrolled at the University of Frankfurt,
determined to study art.
Wiebe had a sense of independence that was still pretty unusual for women at that time. In
1951 she departed for Chicago and later that year was hired
enthusiastically by curators at the Field Museum who recognized
her talents as an exceptional naturalist and artist. She created figures for scientific papers,
illustrated a number of children's books carried on Hanson's work painting
Prehistoric life and created scale models to accompany the mounted skeletons
on display. Some of her work can still be seen around the museum today
Especially in the geology cases on the second floor
where she illustrated geologic phenomena including impact craters from meteorites
And it's in these photographs of her looking so poised and polished
but painting scenes of epic destruction that first piqued my interest
In learning more about her.
One of Wiebe's biggest projects was designing and modeling new dinosaurs for display in our main
Hall a Gorgosaurus
Which came to be known as gorgeous George in the middle of eating a Lambeosaurus. When it was unveiled in
1956 gorgeous George was the first
freestanding dinosaur mounted in any museum. Eugene Richardson who was
the curator fossil invertebrates found it so
remarkable that he wrote a poem about it,
which was delivered upon its unveiling to the public.
Maidi illustrations and models played a big part in breathing life
into the project and her miniatures were on displaying next to the mounted skeletons until
they were eventually removed from the hall in
1990. The dinosaur skeletons were remounted to display a more modern anatomical
understanding and are still on display in our Evolving Planet
Exhibition. Maidi's work continued until 1962 when she left the museum at the age of 40
But she carried a love of art in the natural world throughout the rest of her life
Many things have changed in the years since The Field first commissioned
these artists to help tell the story of life on Earth.
new research is regularly reshaping the way we interpret extinct life-forms
and today while we might not point to Knights or rubies depictions of
Cretaceous apex predators
as the most modern representations of them that doesn't mean their art has lost its value
it's through the work of these artists that researchers
were best able to communicate the progress of science and
bring our ancient world back to life.
Come and see the Gorgassaurus tal his life
Though somewhat thinner standing in the hall before us interrupted in his dinner. 100 million years ago
He found a Lambie assort to munch on
something stopped his feast and so he never had that final luncheon
long ago the date Cretaceous Gorgosaurus roamed Alberta ever hungry fierce voracious
seeking smaller prey to murder
Then he died became a fossil buried near the Red Deer River
past the years asleep and docile giving not a jerk or quiver
Found and shipped to the museum with that meal he never tasted here
He stands and here you see him
Not a bone on him was wasted other skeletons of his book must be held erect by crutches
Not a post to seen on this Hulk. Just the floor is all he touches
Engineers may be well baffled by the structure we're reporting.
here he stands without a scaffold Gorgassaurus
self-supporting
It still has brains on it