Author: Newsroom
Los Angeles, CA (August 23, 2024) — The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is proud to announce the debut of Wolves: Photography by Ronan Donovan on September 17, 2024. The traveling photography exhibit, created by National Geographic Society and the National Museum of Wildlife Art, will display Ronan Donovan’s stunning images and videos highlighting the contrast between wolves living in perceived competition with humans and those living without human intervention.
Wolves: Photography by Ronan Donovan will introduce visitors to wolves as seen by Donovan in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and Ellesmere Island in the high Canadian Arctic. Visitors will see — in unparalleled intimacy — how the Arctic wolves hunt, play, travel, rest, and raise their young in one of the harshest environments on Earth. By contrast, their brethren in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are fearful of humans, making it nearly impossible to document their daily lives. These differences can be attributed to the fact that Arctic wolves rarely experience negative encounters with humans or view them as a threat.
Since 2014, Donovan (a National Geographic Explorer and photographer of wild wolves) has examined the relationship between wild wolves and humans in order to better understand the animals, our shared history, and what drives the persistent human-wolf conflict.
“Wolves are such a fascinating animal to me because of how complex their relationship is with humans,” Donovan says. “Wolves were the first animals humans domesticated some 30,000 years ago and they have lived alongside us ever since as guardians, workers, and companions. Yet as humans moved to more sedentary lives, raising what amounts to easy prey in the form of livestock, wolves have found themselves in conflict with humans.”
As wolves in North America are increasingly under threat due to recent extreme wolf-control laws, and humans continue to impinge on the land and food sources that these animals need to survive, Donovan hopes that his photos will provide people with a better understanding of these often misunderstood animals.
“Wolves have acquired some of the most complex social behavior during their long history of evolution over several million years,” says Dr. Xiaoming Wang, NHM’s Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology. “Such behaviors helped them become top predators in their communities. This exhibit both showcases Donovan’s unique perspectives and also illustrates how such a keystone species plays an outsized influence on the entire ecosystem.”
The visuals presented throughout Wolves: Photography by Ronan Donovan were captured from Donovan’s National Geographic Society-funded work and featured in National Geographic magazine’s 2016 Yellowstone issue and September 2019 issue, as well as the National Geographic WILD series Kingdom of the White Wolf in 2019.
The exhibition is on view at NHM through June 22, 2025 in a newly-renovated gallery that connects to the museum’s new wing and community hub, NHM Commons.