Existing comment:
Mark Sloan
Wilson's Pet Parakeet
2003
In 2003, Mark Sloan photographed the behind-the-scenes collections of Harvard's Natural History Museum. Enlisting the help of curators and department heads, he identified rare scientific specimens with fascinating histories. Harvard's natural history collections comprise some 21 million specimens -- animal, vegetable, and mineral -- from every imaginable part of the planet. Pictured here is Alexander Wilson's hand-colored plate of the Carolina parakeet from Volume 3 of his monumental nine-volume "American Ornithology." With it is the very specimen that Wilson used as a model for his illustration. |