Bill Kerr passes at 85. In Jackson Hole, his vision led to creation of the National Museum of Wildlife Art, a shrine for those globally who value connections between art and nature
The Kerrs, Joffa and Bill, whose collection and vision helped create a global shrine for wildlife art in Jackson Hole. In fact the National Museum of Wildlife Art is the only official national wildlife art museum in the United States
"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life."
—Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
by Todd Wilkinson
William G. Kerr passed away on the Fourth of July. During his life, he didn’t suffer from the Hamlet Syndrome, leaving him immobilized from springing into action by pondering whether it is better to be or not to be, whether to act and try to make a difference or pander blithely to apathy, or whether to do noble things through selflessness instead of dwelling in me-first self-absorption.
Before the end came, he told me late this spring, during one of many great chats we had over the years, that he knew where he aspired to go. More on that, in a minute.
The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, as readers here know, is filled with natural wonders of the world and earth-changing conservation achievements—the latter implemented by great people who came together in their time, rallying to protect the former.
There’s Yellowstone, the world’s first national park; there’s the Shoshone which morphed to become America’s first national forest; there’s Grand Teton National Park that shines as a beacon of why having spectacular places protected as public lands is a superior more enduring option than leaving their fate up to the whims of the free market.
There are wild and scenic rivers, the country’s first anti-poaching law (born here to protect that last 23 surviving bison in Yellowstone), there’s the essence of wilderness, and there are the uncountable number of battles that resulted in every major wild species in Greater Yellowstone (the only place to still have its full complement of free-ranging biodiversity in the Lower 48) brought back from the precipice of extinction.
But most of all, these things happened because of people who rose to challenges and did things where the meek fear to tread. Here, I want to quote Tom McCall, a Republican governor of Oregon who often said you can measure the ethics, morals and values of a nation by how well it treats the environment.
In an interview with author and historian Studs Terkel, McCall said:
"I am just…wondering, where is the glow of yesteryear? I'm wondering where the heroes went. Gosh, I don't know how long ago they left. Heroes are not giant statues framed against a red sky. They are people who say: This is my community, and it is my responsibility to make it better. Interweave all these communities, and you really have an America that is back on its feet, a comfortable nation to live in again. I really think we're gonna have to reassess what constitutes a hero."
Bill Kerr was, and is, a hero. On the day he passed, he was 85.
Joining all of the things mentioned above that make Greater Yellowstone the enduring cradle of American conservation, he and his wife, Joffa, and a group of friends whose affinities stretch across the political aisle, added a human-created wonder to the crown holding this region’s jewels: a museum.
Not just any museum—an institution now set on a hill that when first launched in 1987, was audacious and ahead of its time.
The National Museum of Wildlife Art, which can be found north of Jackson, Wyoming on the way to Grand Teton Park and across from the National Elk Refuge is a portal for mental time travel where by engaging masterful artworks of the past and present, you will care more for the future. That was Kerr’s dream and, steadfast, he saw it and invited us into it.
If you have a heart, you don’t get caught up in any of that slacker “to be or not to be” stuff; overthinking things; pondering, “well, what’s in it for me?” or seeing everything you do as transactional.
Doers do; it’s what’s inside them; they don’t bother to ask why.
Kerr knew that art is one of the few human things that endure across time and exists as a form of experiential alchemy. He knew that when you plant yourself in front of a painting or sculpture or tasteful building or symphony or play or natural landscape holding a view, and slow down and contemplate the elemental force of beauty at full absorption, something might be activated inside you. You’re more likely to care a little more and walk away with expanded awareness, not of yourself, but of everything else around you that sets the context for your own being.
Kerr knew that when you plant yourself in front of a painting or sculpture or tasteful building or symphony or play or natural landscape holding a view, and slow down and contemplate the elemental force of beauty at full absorption, something might be activated inside you. You’re more likely to care a little more and walk away with expanded awareness, not of yourself, but of everything else around you that sets the context for your own being.
At the National Museum of Wildlife Art, you will find unforgettable depictions of wildlife, some of which are so magically conjured that you may wonder if the talent that enabled their creation was channeled through the artists by some kind of higher force.
Kerr, literally, stood as a giant. He was 6’7” and had the lumbering gait in his prime of a gangling bull moose. This spring, Bill was feeling tired; he knew the end was coming; he was grieving the loss of Joffa and reflecting, as all parents do, on the complicated relationships they had with their kids, and he was fearless in facing the inevitable that was at the doorstep.
Before he departed the mortal coil, he reminded me of the place where he hoped he was going for a reunion. (It’s a lake not far from the neighborhood where I had spent my own youth and he knew that I understood the otherworldly reverence he had for it. With many things, he and I were able to speak and feel in shorthand).
A work of art all its own, the structure of the National Museum of Wildlife Art is nestled into a slope north of Jackson overlooking the National Elk Refuge with sweeping sub-panoramic views. From the art inside and along the sculpture walk to its siting, wildlife is celebrated through human interpretation across the ages and in homage to the habitat necessary for animals in Greater Yellowstone to persist. Photo courtesy National Museum of Wildlife Art
His spirit is likely there now. For him, Heaven represented an ethereal rendezvous with his bride of more than half a century, sitting in a fishing boat, cutting power to the outboard trolling motor, drifting through the dawn mist of a Minnesota lake, hearing loons trilling and their being joined by the man who first brought him there as a child long ago—his father, Robert S. Kerr, once known as “the lion of the United States Senate.”
That anyone here might be surprised to discover Bill Kerr, recently a resident of the Fish Creek drainage in Jackson Hole, was the son of a teetotaling senator from Oklahoma, who had also been governor of that state and founded a powerful Oklahoma energy company, is typical. Bill didn’t evince airs or talk down to people.
When his father was serving in Washington DC, the conservative Democrat senator often got together with contemporaries of both parties on weekends. They’d hobnob, maybe play cards or have a libation (again, his father didn’t drink), and they’d use the afternoons of friendship and comity to mend hard feelings that might have emerged from differences they had legislating.
Politicians, Bill would say, were humans, not saints and the best ones put country before party. As a boy and young man, Kerr saw his father advanced as a potential presidential candidate and he was invited to have chats with his dad and his friend from the southern plains, Lyndon Johnson, in the Oval Office.
Few people in Jackson Hole knew much about Bill’s past, or his intense interest in the law, political science, literature and the arc of history going back to ancient philosophers. He had a knack for, out of the blue, uncorking a pertinent quote, be it from a Roman stoic or the satire of Will Rogers.
For several summers, Bill’s father, to escape the heat of Washington or Oklahoma, took his family to northern Minnesota and that’s where his dad decompressed. They’d fish for northerns and walleyes and savor the tranquility of just being on a tarn as the sun rose or set.
When the fish weren’t biting, and Bill and his siblings became restless, his dad would dispense advice as profound as any oratory he delivered on the floor of the Senate. “Son, what we’re doing, which is having a great and memorable day, isn’t about whether the fish we hope to have for supper want to indulge us with their attention; the trophy from this day and the memory that I’m taking home with me when I leave, is being here with you, all of us together, right now.” Kerr found solace in that.
After Bill and Joffa were married, they repaired to that same lake and sometime afterward, in 1962, she gave him a present honoring his graduation from law school—an unpretentious little painting of a sunfish by North Woods sporting artist Les Kouba, legendary for being a two-time winner of the federal Duck Stamp competition. Bill said the simple gift planted a seed of appreciation for wildlife art that blossomed. And it led to he and Joffa amassing the core of what is today considered one of the greatest publicly-accessible collections of wild animal paintings and sculpture in the world.
Two years later, the couple bought a Carl Rungius painting, “Wanderers Above Timberline” on layaway from a gallery in New York City and they recognized the genius of Rungius, ultimately helping to spark a renaissance of public appreciation for the German-American-Canadian artist who is widely considered the finest painter of North American large mammals who ever lived. His isn’t the kind of art you’d find at a Ducks Unlimited banquet. When Rungius as a young man lived in Wyoming for a spell, his painting of a cowboy in the Wind Rivers won a top prize from the National Academy of Design where the most talented painters of the Impressionist era showed their work in America. Rungius died in 1959.
"Old Man of the Mountains" is a powerful painting by Carl Rungius and among a central core of works by Rungius that gave the museum a foundation of early respectability. Truly amazing is to consider that the museum has hundreds of stunning paintings and field studies by Rungius as technically impressive as if he had been a French or American Impressionist painting people instead of wild megafauna. Image courtesy of National Museum of Wildlife Art
“We were lucky,” Bill told me. “In art, you know what you like. At the time we started collecting Rungius, his works were affordable because new movements in art had put a spotlight on others and there were a few years before the world again realized how great he was. One thing led to another.”
Anchored by the largest collection of Rungius paintings, studies, sketches and memorabilia in the US, most of which the Kerrs acquired, the National Museum of Wildlife Art is worth a visit based on that alone. However, it is also because of the totality of what’s inside and on its outside sculpture walk, the only official wildlife art museum in this country. It is the Louvre, Uffizi, Prada, Hermitage, or Met of wildlife art and it is in out-of-the-way Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
On its walls and in its vault is a jaw-dropping list of works by artists going back centuries, the premier contemporary wildlife artists of the last half century and a diversity of new talents emerging on the scene. Every single piece has a story behind it, not only of the animal subject but pertaining to the artist’s inspiration.
Kerr would be the first to say that he was born into opportunity and he repeated the Bible verse, told him by his dad, that “to whom much is given, much is expected.”
While Kerr was a gentle giant, he would become stern if he ever thought people didn’t understand that the museum only came into being because of a tenacious group of others in Jackson Hole and elsewhere who were determined to bring it to life. That includes the unsung staff and board.
A photo of one of the museum's galleries courtesy Kim Leidson Landon
Originally, it was called “the Wildlife of the American West Museum” and situated catty- corner from the Jackson Town Square in a building owned by Jackson State Bank and made available by its former president Dick Scarlett. Dick's wife, Maggie, was among the tour de force people who pushed the nascent concept of the museum forward. Maggie, who was raised in Cody, convinced Jackson Holeans that a museum of the caliber of the Whitney Fine Art Museum in Cody (called a “little Smithsonian”) ought to be located there and one devoted to wildlife art was perfect.
The early founders had grand ideas and eventually their fundraising led to it becoming the National Museum of Wildlife Art, rising at its present location, with a striking architectural motif whose outside facade is modeled, in part, after a Scottish castle. Last year, the museum turned 35 and its success, Kerr would often say, was owed to the community that expanded the circle of supporters and together beheld a bigger vision of what was possible.
(Not unlike those who created Yellowstone and Grand Teton and the national forests and passed laws to help insure the persistence of imperiled species).
My dear friend, Sue Simpson Gallagher, who holds a degree in art history, was tapped by the Kerrs to be the museum’s first curator. She is today a trustee on the museum board and operates a fine art gallery in Cody. She knows what it is like to be mentored by extraordinary people. She is the daughter of Ann Simpson and former US Senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming.
Bill Kerr was like a mentor to Simpson. She, Bill and Joffa had many adventures over the years trying to land new pieces for the collection. “Of all the things he could have been,” she said during a phone chat following word of Bill’s passing. “He could’ve been a successful politician. He could’ve been a college professor. He could’ve been anything. How fortunate are we that he chose to be an art patron.”
Simpson Gallagher added, “I’ve never known anyone with that kind of mind. I often said he was a genius but he was a genius of understanding human behavior and it didn’t hurt that he has a photographic memory. I don’t know anyone who word for word could recite Longfellow or Che Guevara without gurgling it. His favorite historical figure was Abe Lincoln and they shared so many similarities.”
Indeed, Kerr was laconic and introverted. You would ask him a question and, far from being loquacious with an immediate response, he would sit on it, in long pause, until he delivered just the right perfect observation. And sometimes it could be a wry zinger.
It was always a special treat when Bill Kerr shared stories of provenance about historic artworks in the museum collection and the painters and sculptors who created them. The museum had many big "gets" and they include works by Rungius, Wilhelm Kuhnert, Richard Friese and Bruno Liljefors, plus a sizeable number of paintings by Bob Kuhn and works by artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe, Andy Warhol, John James Audubon, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Rembrandt, Anna Hyatt Huntington and many famed Western and contemporary artists. Photo courtesy National Museum of Wildlife Art
Sharing a sentiment held by many, she says that every time someone met him he treated them as if they were the person he was hoping to see in that moment. “In these last years he was ailing and you’d be sad knowing he might pass, but then you’d get a card or a call or an email from him to you. It was exactly what you needed. He thought about others,” she said. “So many of us saw him as this larger than life figure who had an amazing talent for bringing people together and we thought of him as being immortal.”
In this day and age of high-tech gadgetry, museums are under pressure to find ways of appealing to young people by offering them more interactive forms of art education. That, however, is exactly the opposite of what should be happening. Gathering one’s thoughts by spending a quiet afternoon at the museum in the presence of true masterworks carries the same emotional power of being inside a cathedral where timeless substance seems to be oozing out of the walls. The goal ought not be amping up young people but encouraging them to dwell awhile in moments of the sensuous, engaging in the same kind of observation that serves them well in wild nature.
There’s a page-turning book that could be written about the Kerrs, and their art collecting, and how big-hearted community perseverance resulted in a museum that stands as an homage to human reverence for wild nature. It couldn’t be more poignant that its home is in Jackson Hole, having become a point of pilgrimage for artists and art and nature lovers from around the world. It was, after all, paintings and black and white photographs by Thomas Moran and William Henry Jackson that convinced Congress and President Ulysses S. Grant to make Yellowstone the progenitor of all nature preserves in the world.
"We have lost more than a museum founder but a true visionary of the art world," said Steve Seamons, museum director.
Kent Ullberg, known around the world for his wildlife monuments found in public spaces and private collections on several continents, credits Kerr with being a champion that wildlife art never previously had. He refused to let self-annointed critics in the ivory tower of academe declare it to be lesser subject matter.
Humanity loves wildlife, and wildlife art can, all at the same time, be provocatively topical, aesthetic, spiritual and avant-garde as it asks viewers to assess, or re-assess how they think about life on the planet, especially in this age known as the Anthropocene, Ullberg says. Indigenous people are “wildlife artists,” so too were Etruscans, Assyrians, ancient Greeks, Romans, creative souls in the Asian dynasties, those involved in every art movement and modern naturalists following in the footsteps of Darwin. Without the impact of Kerr and the museum in broadening society’s thinking about wildlife art, Ullberg thinks animal imagery would still be treated as mere superficial decoration or associated only with hunting.
Kerr was an unpretentious art connoisseur but as a catalyst he joins a conservation pantheon, because of wildlife art’s content, with figures like the Muries of Jackson Hole, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, Ted Turner, Jane Goodall, and John Muir—doing good things for nature that will benefit others and outlast them.
The last thing Bill Kerr wouldn’t wanted was a bronze statue of himself framed against a red sky. Like the advice he received from his elder, he would say the museum isn’t about him; it’s not about strolling through its galleries and maintaining a checklist of masterpieces they laid their eyes on for a second; it’s about the welcoming togetherness of a nature-loving community that it summons and kindles; it’s about reflecting on the blessing we all share of being fortunate enough to call a planet with the grand diversity of creation home; it’s about remembering that modesty and humility and selflessness goes a lot longer way than staying fixated on self-absorption; and it’s about believing that each of us holds an inordinate amount of power—to give an affirming, nurturing voice to non-humans sharing the planet with us and who need us.
For years, whether they spent warm months in Jackson, wintered in Carmel, California or had extended stays elsewhere, Bill did something that speaks of his own relationship with art: he carried a painting by Philip R. Goodwin with him. Goodwin had been a painter, who studied under Howard Pyle during the Golden Age of Illustration, had his works appearing on magazines, book covers and calendars and his adventure “predicament scenes” were favorites of President Theodore Roosevelt. Why did he tote around the Goodwin, I asked Bill.
“It’s my therapy,” he said. “No matter what struggle you’re going through or heavy thoughts you have, art can give you an escape to places of pleasanter things.”
The National Museum of Wildlife Art is a trove of stunningly pleasanter things. After its co-founder died this week, it posted a tribute to Kerr and shared words from a speech he delivered on the museum’s 25th anniversary in 2012. “Nature is as fragile as it is fierce. Our institution holds and cares for some of humankind’s most thoughtful and spirited portrayals of the natural world as we have known it. That is a legacy we have the opportunity to embellish and preserve.”
Having an impactful place where that’s possible is owed to a person who practiced those virtues. Because of you, Bill Kerr, we feel it in our hearts with more gratitude than you ever knew.
EDITOR'S NOTE: If you have memories you'd like to share about Bill Kerr, please send them to us by clicking here and we may print them below.
We apologize for the grainy nature of this photograph, but it's a fun one. Here, a captive African lion named "Joseph" who helped inspire artists who provided animation for the movie, "Lion King" made an appearance at the National Museum of Wildlife Art. There, the lion was joined by some of the greatest living wildlife artists along with Bill and Joffa Kerr. In the photo are: Guy Coheleach, Lindsay Scott, Ken Bunn, Bob Kuhn, Simon Combes, and gallery owner Rob Pitzer.
"Western Visions," an art show held at the museum every September that coincides with the Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival, attracts a who's who of contemporary wildlife artists. One of the great delights for artists over the years was spending time with Bill and Joffa Kerr, who are not pictured. Photo courtesy of artist Laney Hicks
Readers respond:
From Susan Brooks
Jackson Hole
Bill was almost the first person I met in Jackson Hole. I went to an early event when the new museum was still downtown and happened to sit by Bill. Turned out he knew my great uncle, also an Oklahoma oil developer (and former Iowa businessman). I started to volunteer almost immediately and still do today. The National Museum of Wildlife Art has been important to me for over 30 years and where I met many of my closest friends. I have given hundreds of tours I think. I have benefited from his many lectures on the collection over all that time and often found it added lots of interesting facts to my own presentations.
I will miss Bill as he showed concern for the volunteers in addition to the staff and artists. He took the time to answer our questions, show an interest in our lives and families, and appreciate our knowledge of the lives and careers of many artists ---in fact we could sometimes surprise him with new information.
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From Laney Hicks
Crowheart, Woming
Just a short message of remembrance about Bill and Joffa. This isn't about what he did for me, but rather what they did for us, the artists. The deepest impression over the years is that Bill and Joffa always did it with class. From the beginnings in Jackson, to the construction of the museum, it was always about class. It gave wildlife art the status it deserves. Yes, I can talk about what Bill did for me, but overall, it is the body of wildlife artists the benefited. And especially, women artists. I can't think of another institution that treats women artists with the equal billing that men receive. And today, the staff at the museum continues to hold the high standards and professional exhibits and educational programs that are a reflection of the Kerr family.
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From Andrew Denman, wildlife artist
Tucson, Arizona
I just read the beautiful article about William G. Kerr by Todd Wilkinson and wanted to share my memories of Bill. Todd, if you see this email, thanks so much for this wonderful tribute to a man we both respected deeply, and thank you for YOUR role in supporting and lending your legitimacy to the world of wildlife art. Here goes:
Much has already been said about Bill Kerr’s great character and stellar contributions to the art world, especially his key role in bringing the National Musuem of Wildlife Art into being, but behind that greater story there are hundreds of smaller narratives about the specific and significant role he played in helping the careers of living artist like me.
In my mid-twenties, I was showing with Pacific Wildlife Galleries in Lafayette, CA, at that time one of the best wildlife art galleries in the world, hosting the likes of Bateman, Brenders, Seerey-Lester, Isaac, and even Ray Harris-Ching. Bill came into the gallery and saw one of my paintings, “Network” (featuring swallows on rooftop gas pipes) which he recommended to the acquisition committee at the National Museum of Wildlife Art. And just like that, I became the youngest artist represented in that museum’s collection in their history (at the time; I don’t believe I still hold that title). Earlier that same year, I had applied to the very competitive Western Visions show and been promptly rejected. At that time, the running joke was that someone had to die for a new artist to get in, so I knew my chances were slim, and was hardly shocked to get the thin envelope. But when the Museum received “Network” and saw my work in person, my gallery received a call from Adam Harris himself saying that the Museum had reconsidered its earlier decision, and they would love for me to join Western Visions. I could scarcely believe it.
It was at that first Western Visions, which to my young eyes looked like attending the Oscar’s, that I first met Bill Kerr in person. He was a tall, lean, giant of a man, and could have been intimidating were it not for his relaxed manner, kind eyes, and the immediate warmth and gentleness he exuded. He said some very kind words about my work, and told me that thought it was long overdue for me to have representation in Jackson Hole, and that he had already spoken to a Maryvonne Leshe at Trailside Galleries on my behalf. And just like that, I had my first gallery representation in Jackson Hole, and with one of its most venerable and highly regarded galleries to boot! That was 2006. Just a few short years later, in the winter of 2009, I had the honor of being the Lanford Monroe Memorial Artist in Residence at the Museum, one of many moments in my career when I knew that somewhere behind the scenes, Bill had been singing my praises, and doors had opened accordingly.
At another Western Visions show, I was told that my painting “The Landing” (featuring an Osprey in flight) had sold to an anonymous trustee who had already donated it to the permanent collection. I was unsurprised to learn that it had been Bill Kerr stepping in on my behalf again. I was actually told that I wasn’t really supposed to know that it was him (hopefully he would forgive me for revealing that now), which was typical of a man who did a whole lot of good for a lot of people, not because he wanted praise, credit, or even thanks, but because he took joy in supporting the careers of artists he believed in. Over the years, I feel like I have become a part of the Western Visions and the broader National Museum of Wildlife Art Family, and that extends to many wonderful folks on staff, in leadership, trustees, board members, and volunteers. But I will always regard Bill Kerr as the man who first held the door open for me. And of course, not just for me by any stretch of the imagination. I have often said that one of the things that makes this institution unique, is the strong role it plays in advocating for and supporting the visions of living artists. The mentorship and guardian angel role I felt from Bill is one familiar to many other artists, some just starting out, and many whose careers are far more well-established than mine. Bill was there for all of us, a kindly, gentle spirit of great vision, commitment, compassion, and generosity.
Still, I think the moment I had with Bill that means the most to me, is when he discussed the painting he bought from my last show with Pacific Wildlife Galleries before they closed down in 2008, the painting he kept for his own personal collection. It was a small painting from the period where I often incorporated typeface into my work (always a controversial, love it or hate it choice). It was called “The Answer,” and perhaps encapsulates better than any other piece I have ever painted, the spiritual connection I feel to nature. It was based on an experience I had watching a mother red-tailed hawk training her fledglings to fly, and the emotion I felt in that moment inspired a poem in 2005 that became the aforementioned painting three years later (image below). Here is the text of that poem:
T h e A n s w e r
a poem by Andrew Denman, 2005
I stand in my yard and look above,
head snapped from dull reverie by
The whistle of a hawk and the answer of another
Wheeling overhead, tilting on the wind like proud kites.
Mother trains young
Today as it must have always been, and should be,
against the swirling
Twists of high clouds that grow and fade like sheer dancers on a warm sea stage.
I can never touch the top of that blue, but I am a part of it,
The family of birds, the white wisps that pull me higher.
A welling of grateful tears- they sting only a little-
And I actually breathe the words out loud…
Of course there is.
I have never claimed to know “the answer,” to anything really. The Universe has never been a place of absolutes. But in the moments I spent watching those birds circling overhead, I could feel a rightness in the Universe, a great and overwhelming sense that everything was and would be just fine. That it always had been. I don’t know what was going through Bill Kerr’s mind in his final days, but I know in my heart of hearts that the answer to whatever his questing soul was seeking is this: “Of course there is.”
Rest in Peace, Bill Kerr (1938-2023)
About Todd Wilkinson
Todd Wilkinson, founder of Mountain Journal, is author of the book Ripple Effects: How to Save Yellowstone and American's Most Iconic Wildlife Ecosystem. Wilkinson has been writing about Greater Yellowstone for 35 years and is a correspondent to publications ranging from National Geographic to The Guardian. He is author of several books on topics as diverse as scientific whistleblowers and Ted Turner, and a book about the harrowing story of Jackson Hole grizzly mother 399, the most famous bear in the world which features photographs by Thomas Mangelsen. For more information on Wilkinson, click here. (Photo by David J Swift).
