Art Metropole

#16405

Jaguar Group

Artist

Isadora Reisner

Price

$40.00

Date

2025

Publisher

Printed Matter Inc.

Format

Artists' Books

Size

15 × 23 cm

Length

194 pp

Genre

Art History, Culture, Criticism

Over the course of Jaguar Group’s extended text, Reisner draws on observational writing and archival research to offer an account of a wildlife diorama at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hall of North American Mammals. Through a consideration of the suspended scene—one that depicts two taxidermied jaguars gazing across a rugged desert vista at sunset—the project contends with the strong allure that Reisner feels for the diorama and the contradictions tied up in complicated American histories of Westward Expansion, early 20th century conservationism, and the construction of national mythology.
Jaguar Group considers how systems of display blur the line between reality and simulation—and life and death—to present a “natural” ideal. The project extends a critical lens on historical approaches of collecting institutions through their amassing of biological specimens, funding of big game expeditions, and the depiction of lands that have been abstracted from narratives of indigenous stewardship. The work is situated within the broader cultural context of natural history museums as sites of contemporary protest and inquiry amidst more urgent calls for decolonizing museums and the repatriation of cultural artifacts. Ultimately, Jaguar Group asks how we can both critique and love such an idiosyncratic, confusing, but beautiful monument.
Jaguar Group incorporates excerpts from historical letters from James Perry Wilson, the talented muralist who created the backdrop to the Jaguar Group diorama in the early 1940s. His affectionate letters with Thano, a young soldier on furlough, chronicle his work in the Museum and share insight into his painterly technique—his approach to concealing his art and transporting the viewer through attention to tonality, color theory and forced perspective—and the distortion of reality which is necessary for the illusion of the diorama to function.
The book’s color scheme is informed by Wilson’s oil painted murals, and a clear PVC cover references the smudged fingerprinted glass of the Museum’s diorama.