{"id":566670,"date":"2026-07-24T22:39:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T22:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/566670\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T22:39:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T22:39:14","slug":"night-at-the-museum-uws-artist-patricia-j-wynne-transmits-life-to-the-page","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/566670\/","title":{"rendered":"Night at the Museum: UWS Artist Patricia J. Wynne Transmits Life to the Page"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Patricia J. Wynne in her home studio. Photo by Bonnie Eissner.<\/p>\n

By Bonnie Eissner<\/p>\n

The American Museum of Natural History, with its halls of fossilized and taxidermied creatures, can seem full of life, especially after hours when the hordes of human visitors have departed.<\/p>\n

For science illustrator and artist Patricia J. Wynne, who was drawing there with fellow artists on a recent Friday night, it was Eden.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just think it\u2019s magic when I come, and especially when it\u2019s empty,\u201d Wynne said as she sat drawing in the darkened mezzanine of the cavernous Akeley Hall of African Mammals. \u201cIt\u2019s not, to me, a place where you sense death at all, even though it\u2019s full of dead animals. You feel the sense of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Against long odds and in the face of ever more sophisticated technology, Wynne has carved a livelihood as a prolific freelance scientific illustrator. She served for decades as an artist-in-residence at the museum and has created largely hand-drawn art for nearly 300 books for adults and children, as well as for media, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Scientific American.<\/p>\n

While far from a household name, she has left a vast imprint. Many visitors to the American Museum of Natural History have seen, or even stepped on, her art without realizing it. And she has made an indelible impression on the artists and scientists who do know her.<\/p>\n

She began freelancing for the museum in 1974, when she moved to New York from Michigan, where she and her husband, the artist Maceo Mitchell, had full-time academic jobs. Married after meeting at the University of Iowa\u2019s prestigious M.F.A. in printmaking, she became the senior staff artist at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology; he was a professor at Macomb County Community College.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were getting too comfortable,\u201d Wynne said. She was restless and realized, she recalled, \u201cIf we don\u2019t move now, we\u2019ll never move. We\u2019ll have a house. We\u2019ll have a backyard, and we won\u2019t move.\u201d<\/p>\n

They landed first in a loft on the Bowery with their pet cat and some fish, but soon sought a quieter part of town. They found an affordable apartment in a building on Central Park West in the low 100s. By combining that apartment with a neighboring one, they have since made room for two studios, the art they\u2019ve accumulated from friends and dealers, and their pets \u2014 currently 11 lizards, three finches, three canaries, a cat, and about 25 fish.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always been drawn to animals,\u201d Wynne said. She grew up about 20 miles west of Chicago, when the area was still largely farmland. In New York, she realized there was just one problem: \u201cThere\u2019s not enough animals,\u201d she remembers telling Mitchell.<\/p>\n

When Wynne approached the natural history museum that first year in the city, she was told there was no money. \u201cThat was the answer to everything,\u201d she said. But she didn\u2019t buy it. \u201cI have never given up in my whole life. I just kept pushing, and that\u2019s where I ended up.\u201d<\/p>\n

She became an artist-in-residence in the Department of Mammalogy and has since drawn thousands of illustrations for scientific and educational publications as well as for permanent exhibitions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Different drawings and etchings by Wynne.<\/p>\n

Between 2011 and 2012, when the museum restored the 43 dioramas in its renowned Bernard Family Hall of North American Mammals, where an Alaska brown bear stands on its hind legs, bison roam, and armadillos gather, Wynne created art for the new displays. Her drawings of the dioramas and of the flora and fauna inside grace the backlit panels that accompany each scene.<\/p>\n

Wynne also put her touch on the museum\u2019s adjacent Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall, which was renovated at the same time. She designed the large bronze medallion, emblazoned with bison, that\u2019s embedded on the floor in front of the life-size sculpture of Roosevelt \u2014 a popular photo spot.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Theodore Roosevelt Memorial at the American Museum of Natural History. Photo by Bonnie Eissner.<\/p>\n

Soon after, museum zoologists named a new bat species in her honor \u2014 Thyroptera wynneae. \u201cExceptional for clarity, elegant rendering, and meticulous attention to relevant detail, Patricia\u2019s work is immediately recognizable and inimitable,\u201d the researchers wrote in the 2014 publication, fittingly illustrated by Wynne, that describes the species, commonly known as Patricia\u2019s disk-winged bat.<\/p>\n

Wynne is as adept at whimsy as she is at realism, as evidenced by the hundreds of books that bear her art. Her illustrations appear in dozens of coloring books, activity books, and picture books, including the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award-winning \u201cHello, Bumblebee Bat.\u201d She has also collaborated with scientists and authors such as zoologist Bill Schutt, whose books include the praised \u201cCannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History,\u201d a lighthearted look at ways animals and humans feast on their own kind. It includes more than 30 illustrations by Wynne; most are of animals.<\/p>\n

Beginning in the late 1970s, Wynne worked with George Lucas on several activity book tie-ins to \u201cStar Wars\u201d and \u201cThe Empire Strikes Back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wynne remembers her agent asking her if she\u2019d like to work on books for a hot movie that featured a robot. She said yes and ran out to catch \u201cStar Wars.\u201d Now collectors\u2019 items, her books include \u201cChewbacca\u2019s Activity Book\u201d and \u201cThe Empire Strikes Back: A Pop-Up Book.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wynne wrote one instructional book, \u201cCats: Secrets of Observational Drawing.\u201d In it, she shares her twin passions: art and animals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI come from a family who loved felines, all felines,\u201d she writes, \u201cand I have drawn cats my whole life. Inspiration comes from living with creatures at home and visiting them in zoos, from piles of photos, from videos, from taxidermy, and from museum works. Sketching repeatedly from any and all of these sources will improve your work.\u201d<\/p>\n

For about 10 years, Wynne taught an animal anatomy drawing class at the American Museum of Natural History. When COVID hit, the class ended. But a few years ago, Wynne got permission to invite former students and other interested artists to join her at the museum on Friday nights to draw.<\/p>\n

Artist Koren Christofides came to draw dinosaurs on a recent Friday night. \u201cIt\u2019s so special,\u201d she said of being at the museum after hours. \u201cI loved it when I first showed up.\u201d She volunteers in the museum\u2019s busy Discovery Room on Saturday afternoons and called the evening sessions her reward. \u201cPatricia\u2019s the real deal because she\u2019s a superb scientific illustrator,\u201d Christofides added.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Patricia J. Wynne in the American Museum of Natural History\u2019s Akeley Hall of African Mammals. Photo by Bonnie Eissner.<\/p>\n

Wynne spent her evening in the Hall of African Mammals adding bush to her drawing of yellow-billed hornbills and impala, which she had seen on safari in South Africa. She liked the trees, shrubs, and grasses of a nearby diorama and over a couple of hours drew them into her own artwork. Having arrived just before 5:30 p.m., she left the museum after 9 p.m.<\/p>\n

Asked at the end of the night if she\u2019d ever retire, she quoted sculptor Henry Moore: \u201cArtists don\u2019t retire. They die.\u201d<\/p>\n

Subscribe to West Side Rag\u2019s FREE email newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>. And you can Support the Rag\u00a0here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patricia J. Wynne in her home studio. Photo by Bonnie Eissner. By Bonnie Eissner The American Museum of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-566670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}