Digital Collections | AMNH - Carl and Mary in Africa

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Tags

Akeley, Carl Ethan, 1864-1926

Akeley, Mary L. Jobe (Mary Lenore Jobe), 1878-1966

Akeley-Eastman-Pomeroy African Hall Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History (1926)

Exhibition preparation

Hornbills

Hunting

Jansson, Arthur August, 1890-1960

Mammals

National Film Preservation Foundation

Raddatz, Richard

Rockwell, Robert H.

Scientific expeditions

Asset ID film024

Title Carl and Mary in Africa

Date 1926

Country Democratic Republic of the Congo

Collection/Work Relation AMNH Special Collections, Film Collection no. 24: Carl and Mary in Africa

Publication History Clark, James Lippitt. Report of the Central African Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History. New York: 1947-1948. Typescript. Clark, James Lippitt. Central African Expedition, American Museum of Natural History [Field Diary]. [1948]. Ms.

Repository American Museum of Natural History

Rights statement Information on rights available at repository.

Description Filmed during the AMNH Eastman-Pomeroy-Akeley East African Expedition, 1926. In the opening sequence, Carl Ethan Akeley (associate in the AMNH Department of Mammalogy, and associate curator and adviser in the AMNH Department of Preparation) watches artist William R. Leigh painting habitat studies for the background of the klipspringer group, one of the dioramas now in the museum's Akeley Hall of African Mammals. At the campsite, located in the Lukenia Hills 40 miles east of Nairobi, Leigh and artist Arthur Jansson display their canvases; preparator Richard Raddatz makes plaster casts of leaves and other accessories for habitat groups; Mary Jobe Akeley is seen writing in her tent and taxidermist Robert H. Rockwell is seen at work. Later in the mess tent Raddatz, Jansson, Mary Akeley, Rockwell, and Leigh are joined by Carl Akeley. At another campsite in Uganda, Mary Akeley disturbs a hornbill nest in the hollow of a tree so that the nest's inhabitants will appear. This sequence filmed over a long period shows the male hornbill feeding his family through the opening in the tree trunk; eventually, the juvenile is old enough to leave the nest but perches on a branch still begging for food. Robert Rockwell tans a giraffe hide at a campsite in Tanganyika (now Tanzania). Various African mammals also appear: giraffes, cows, oryxes, Burchell's zebras, Thomson's gazelles, eland, and klipspringers. The Eastman-Pomeroy-Akeley East African Expedition was Carl Akeley's last: he died on November 17, 1926, at Mount Mikeno in the Kivu district of the Belgian Congo (now Zaire).

External resources

External Resource AMNH Library authority record: Akeley-Eastman-Pomeroy African Hall Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History (1926)

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