Name of Presenter/Organizer: Jay Matternes, Richard Milner, and Kirk Johnson
Date and Location of Presentation/Talk/Event: October 17, 2024, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
SUMMARY
Jay Matternes is a paleoartist. He works with scientists to create realistic depictions of prehistoric (and modern) scenes. Matternes also has a fondness for Native American culture and made some paintings and murals depicting this. Also at this talk was Richard Milner, an anthropologist and historian of science who authored Jay Matternes: Paleoartist and Wildlife Painter. This book tells the story of Matternes’s career, including many never before published works. In this presentation, Matternes and Milner discussed the story behind many paintings and went into detail about what they depicted. Some of my favorite stories were about Matternes’s relationship with Jane Goodall and about Native Americans leading a herd of buffalo off of a cliff, which I will go into more detail about soon. Milner also gave a few singing performances during the presentation, which I was not expecting at all and found extremely entertaining. After Matternes and Milner finished talking about the paintings, Sant Director Kirk Johnson joined them for a small conversation.
MY TAKEAWAYS
This presentation did not make any arguable points; it simply discussed Matternes’s work and career. The only thing that the presenters (particularly Milner) tried to convince us of was to buy the book, and I actually found that they did a pretty good job of doing that, partially because they offered to autograph the book. When I heard about the presentation, I had no interest in paleoart at all. I did not even realize that it was an actual profession. Nonetheless, I decided to attend it, mostly due to the fact that some of my friends were going and that I loved dinosaurs as a kid. However, the way Matternes and Milner talked about the paintings piqued my interest. I did not end up buying the book, but it was mainly because of the price tag, not because I was not interested in the contents.One of the most interesting things to me about Jay Matternes is his relationship with Jane Goodall. Matternes was invited by National Geographic to create illustrations for Goodall’s My Friends, the Wild Chimpanzee. Specifically, he had to create illustrations that were not already captured on camera. One example of this is when Goodall’s campsite got ransacked by chimpanzees. Matternes depicted a chimp eating a paper while Goodall’s husband, Hugo van Lawick threw clothes out of their tent in an effort to distract the chimps. Milner also mentioned that Matternes had to adapt his drawings as Goodall’s descriptions changed. At first, the descriptions were that chimps were playful, but they later evolved to describe their dark and violent size.
BUFFALO JUMP
Another one of my favorite works of Matternes is the one depicting Native Americans leading a herd of buffalo off of a cliff. Milner talked about a strategy that Native Americans employed to hunt buffalo. They would herd the buffalo and lead them to a cliff. Because of the speed of the buffalo and the continuous herd behind them, they would not be able to react fast enough to stop and would fall off of the cliff, where some people would be waiting to harvest them. They also had some people on the sides of the herd. If a buffalo managed to not fall off of the cliff, there would be people waiting there with spears to kill it. I particularly enjoy this painting because it captures the action of the scene so well. The painting shows some buffalo mid fall, oriented in many directions, and some trying to stop but failing.
What I enjoy so much about Matternes’s art is that it so accurately portrays every little detail about a certain event. He manages to tell a whole story in just a single image. His works do not show just a single moment in time but a whole series of events. He also does this extremely accurately. Overall, this presentation opened me up to the world of paleoart and gave me a newfound appreciation for the work paleoartists do.