Conservation From Here by Jospeh Rossan

I. Conservation from Here is a multi-media exhibition by artist Joseph Rossano, presented at Sagamore Hill National Historic Site and the Oyster Bay Historical Society (OBHS). The exhibition originates from the premise that conservation is derived from animal reverence, expressed most simply as a love of animals. Traditional conservation methods as practiced in the age of Theodore Roosevelt included the taking of animal life for the purpose of scientific study. Contemporary conservation methods now augment specimen collection with the mapping and examination of genetic material, often lessening the necessity to collect entire specimens. Yet both advance from a basic love of animals and a desire to understand and protect their habitats in nature. An awareness of nature began for Roosevelt during his youth in Oyster Bay; Conservation from Here strives to point out that thetenets that generated historic conservation efforts remain the same, and the “Here” is wherever we are.

The exhibit puts forth the idea that a natural progression occurs with all who care about nature. The progression begins with a curiosity about the flora and fauna of one’s immediate surroundings. Such curiosity fosters a need to examine more closely the world of creatures, eventually leading to one collecting them for further study. Finally, an understanding is reached, a realization that one must work to protect and conserve the very creatures such study has brought them to better understand and to love.  Conservation From Here is an effort to expose this experience to a large audience.

II. The installation at Sagamore Hill’s Old Orchard Museum contains five enlargements of animal images harvested from engravings on guns which belonged to Roosevelt. Nearly life-sized, and rendered atop panels made from trees planted by the twenty-sixth president, the images, painted with pigment made from that same tree’s bark, depict iconic North American game. Juxtaposing the panels, the very gun adorned with elk, bison, deer, bear and antelope can be viewed, along with selected artifacts from the site’s collections, bearing depictions of animals as objects of reverence.  

III. A second installation, encompassing the front lawn of Roosevelt’s home at Sagamore Hill, features the life size silhouettes of nearly two hundred Roosevelt Elk. In this herds’ reflective surfaces, visitors are drawn to see themselves within the mirrored images of earth and sky.

IV. A third installation, comprising elk in smaller numbers, appears on the lawn of the Oyster Bay Historical Society as a testament that conservation has advanced directly from those methods used by Roosevelt and the scientists of his time. Superimposed upon the inside of OBHS is a monochrome facsimile of Sagamore Hill’s North Room, specifically the arrangement of the animals it holds; elk, leopard, jaguar, elephant, and bison. Each animal, sculpted in the round, is represented in white, or ash, and covered in crushed glass, or mirrors, and can only be accurately identified by the DNA barcode contained in a hanging tag affixed to the animal.  The wall space between these sculptures is adorned with native species, represented in a full-color J. J.  Audubon format, compiled from specimens collected by citizen scientists cataloging the animals of Long Island through their DNA. In this “North Room Installation”, the art serves to connect historical specimen collection with genome sequencing and other contemporary conservation methods, showing how the strategy of museum naturalists—to capture and preserve through taxidermy—has evolved to encompass DNA barcoding in order to gain knowledge of a species’ morphology, descent, and adaptation.

In the exhibition’s title, “Here” speaks to Oyster Bay as the home of Sagamore Hill and the place of Roosevelt’s growth from citizen scientist to conservationist.  But in a larger context“Here” points to where conservation starts – and it starts wherever we are.

- Joseph Rossano (2017)