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 family-friendly exhibition, “Wild New Ways: Maurice Sendak’s Animal Kingdom,” at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyo., May 15-Sept. 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, and 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.
Over a 60-year career that includes the classic 1964 Caldecott Medal-winning Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak has found that “each book demands an individual stylistic approach.” While his artwork references both artists of the past and pop culture, his driving motivation has always been to satisfy the child in himself.” One of the best-known creators of contemporary children's books, Sendak has won every important prize in children's literature, including the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Illustration (1970), the National Medal of Arts (1996), and a Library of Congress "Living Legend" medal (2000).
Media Contacts: Darla Worden, WordenGroup Strategic Public Relations, 307.734.5335, darla@wordenpr.com; Zeenie Scholz, National Museum of Wildlife Art, 307.732.5437, zscholz@wildlifeart.org
