[QUOTE][IMG]http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013/12/13/scherer002_custom-7118a564d0ad2ff0f8173649b2a51d5826b08c32-s40-c85.jpg[/IMG]
[I]The Colobus Monkeys diorama at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.[/I][/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]You've probably never heard of painter Fred F. Scherer. If you've ever been to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City, though, you may have seen his paintings — probably without realizing it.
Scherer died at age 98 a few weeks ago. His art — those big murals you see behind taxidermic animals in museum dioramas — deserves a closer look.
We visited the AMNH to photograph some of the installations containing his paintings, and spoke with Stephen C. Quinn, who recently retired as an artist from the museum, and knew Scherer well.
"Fred worked at the museum at the golden age of diorama production," Quinn says. "He started at age 19 and worked as an apprentice on the famed Mountain Gorilla diorama."
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[QUOTE][IMG]http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013/12/13/scherer008_custom-085394211f5e2286327919309bf21bd8c8cfe9bd-s40-c85.jpg[/IMG]
[I]Mountain Gorillas, one of the first dioramas on which Fred Scherer apprenticed.[/I][/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]Most of Scherer's paintings were created between the 1940s and '60s — at a time when city-dwellers may have had little access to nature. Museum artists like Scherer worked to bring nature alive indoors.
According to Quinn, Scherer was one of many working in this genre that went back decades — "to a time that preceded really good photography."
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[B]See the rest of the article and images at:[/B][url]http://www.npr.org/2013/12/14/250797697/in-the-background-art-you-may-never-notice[/url]
It's really cool how the paintings seamlessly blend in with the background.
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