{"id":556509,"date":"2026-03-22T06:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T06:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/556509\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T06:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T06:59:09","slug":"bronze-bison-statues-installed-outside-smithsonian-national-museum-of-natural-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/556509\/","title":{"rendered":"Bronze bison statues installed outside Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History"},"content":{"rendered":"

KEARNEY, Mo. (AP) \u2014 The national mammal of the United States is getting in on America\u2019s 250th birthday<\/a> celebration. <\/p>\n

Three bison statues cast in bronze have taken up a permanent display outside the Smithsonian\u2019s National Museum of Natural History in Washington. The pieces \u2014 which are larger than real-life bison \u2014 made their public debut in the nation\u2019s capital on Friday. <\/p>\n

The bison earned its official status<\/a> as the nation\u2019s mammal under a law signed by former President Obama in 2016. Millions of bison once roamed the Great Plains but were nearly driven to extinction in the 1800s. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a wonderful story of conservation working, it\u2019s a story of people seeing a need and getting behind that to conserve an animal that is specific to North America,\u201d said Gary Staab, a paleoartist who made the statues. <\/p>\n

Staab designed and sculpted the statues in Kearney, Missouri, where he works full-time to create sculptures of animals and historical artifacts for museums around the world. For the bison, Staab sculpted the full-size statues in foam and clay before they were cast in bronze and assembled at a foundry in Colorado. The three statues depict a bull, a cow and a calf. <\/p>\n

He said it took about four months to complete the sculptures \u2014 a time frame he called \u201clighting fast\u201d given the size of the pieces. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey really represent a really unbelievably beautiful and unique thing about North America,\u201d Staab said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KEARNEY, Mo. (AP) \u2014 The national mammal of the United States is getting in on America\u2019s 250th birthday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1313,449,458,459,64,63,11967,15033,32131,460,9285,134,274848,482,975,274849,2041,38039,488],"class_list":["post-556509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-animals","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-barack-obama","tag-bison","tag-dc-wire","tag-design","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-entertainment","tag-gary-staab","tag-general-news","tag-missouri","tag-national-museum-of-natural-history","tag-north-america","tag-smithsonian-institution","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}