Where the Wild(life) Things Are

From a press release:

"Show me wild new ways," a wolfish Max commands in an early draft of Where the Wild Things Are. That early vision of the award-winning 10-line story that came to life as an $80-plus million Hollywood movie is just one of 30 original illustrations celebrating Sendak's animal artistry on view in a new exhibition, "Wild New Ways: Maurice Sendak's Animal Kingdom," at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson May 15-September 19. Works for the exhibition, drawn from the Rosenbach Museum & Library's collection of over 10,000 Sendak drawings, manuscripts and working materials, demonstrate the range of styles with which the artist captures textures of fur, feathers, and scales -- from the precisely drawn pen and ink bats of The Bat-Poet to the soft watercolors of Mr. Rabbit and The Lovely Present.

From wild things to domestic animals, mythical beasts to common farm animals, Maurice Sendak has included animals of some kind in almost every one of the 108 books he has illustrated. In addition to his nuanced rendering of the animals themselves, he famously delves into themes involving the wild and tame in all of us - in keeping with the National Museum of Wildlife Art's mission of using original art to probe humanity's relationship with nature.

A complete schedule of museum exhibitions and events is available online at http://www.wildlifeart.org/