As announced by new ASE President Paton White at the Annual Meeting April 1, “The board is thrilled to announce that the Audubon Society of the Everglades has received a donation of three framed antique Audubon prints from an anonymous benefactor for fundraising and educational purposes. These are from the rare Chromolithography edition by J. Bien, New York: 1858, Purple Grackle; 1860, Redwinged Starling; and 1860, Purple Martin; each is approximately 38” x 25” vertical format and handsomely framed. As the donation is currently crated and archived, we will include facsimile images here of this important gift. Watch each Kite and the ASE web site and Facebook Page for monthly updates and historical information about these prints.  We are grateful to our anonymous donor for this generosity.”

The fundraising effort will likely be scheduled for Fall-Winter 2014-2015 and concluded at the next Annual Meeting; in the meantime, we will be posting articles in each of the upcoming Kite newsletters about Audubon, his paintings and the prints created from his artwork, and about our prints in particular. Please contact sheilaelliot@yahoo.com with questions you’d like answered in these upcoming articles.

Meanwhile, for you “Snowbirds”, there is a “once in a lifetime” exhibition of Audubon’s original bird paintings at the New York Historical Society – it’s well worth a visit, even if you need to go out of your way while traveling north to get there.NYHS continues its acclaimed series of exhibitions celebrating John James Audubon’s legendary original watercolors, “Audubon’s Aviary: Parts Unknown (Part II of The Complete Flock)” on view through Monday May 26. All but 25 of the 132 watercolors on display depict water birds or waders, many of which are among Audubon’s most spectacular and largest birds, such as the Great Blue Heron and the Whooping Crane. You’ll see the Atlantic Puffin from his trip to Labrador and from the southeast, the Magnificent Frigatebird, a spectacular male Snowy Egret in flamboyant “aigrettes” breeding plumage, and our familiar local White Ibis, Brown Pelican, and Purple Gallinule – not to speak of seemingly ubiquitous Canada Geese, Mallard Ducks, Gulls and Terns ranging north from here ….The NYHS exhibit also features audio birdcalls and songs of each species provided by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, as well as video footage, to demonstrate the importance of birdsong for species identification and to underscore Audubon’s extensive field observations. iPads will feature the Havell plates for comparison with the watercolors (in some cases the printer was expected to complete the distant background, for example). Also on view will be a variety of objects drawn from NYHS’s rich Audubon collection, the largest single repository of Auduboniana in the world, and a video record of Part 1, last year’s exhibition of the first 175 Audubon bird watercolors. Accompanying the exhibition is the lavishly illustrated book Audubon’s Aviary: The Original Watercolors for “The Birds of America” by Roberta J.M. Olson, Curator of this monumental show.

Above  are color images of facsimiles of the donated Audubon prints and links to information about the New York Historical Society’s Audubon Birds exhibition. http://audubon.nyhistory.org  http://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/audubons-aviary-parts-unknown-part-ii-complete-flock and http://www.nyhistorystore.com/shop/audubon/audubons-aviary-original-watercolors-birds-america-book-hardcover