50 Birds of America: Prints by Richard Sloan

Feb 1 – Apr 29, 2025 | Kimbrough Gallery

Richard Sloan’s careful attention to detail is captured in his exquisite illustrations of Southeastern birds. Once a staff illustrator at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, Sloan’s work has been collected by the Smithsonian Institution among others. This collection of illustrations was donated to the Museum by Mr. & Mrs. Carl Eisemann.

Sloan was born in Chicago, Illinois, where he attended the America Academy Of Art. He then worked as an advertising illustrator before joining Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo as staff artist. After a 1966 sellout solo exhibition at the Abercrombie & Fitch Gallery in Chicago, Sloan left Lincoln Park to embark upon a lifetime of capturing the world’s rainforests in paint. He was the first wildlife artist in North America to turn all his efforts as a painter to documenting exotic animals of the world’s tropics.

He first traveled to British Guiana (Guyana) in 1969 and made seventeen expeditions to the Amazon Basin, the Peruvian Andes, Guatemala, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and Thailand.

His paintings have been exhibited at the National Geographic Society’s Explorers Hall, the American Museum of Natural History, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Gilcrease Museum, the Royal Scottish Academy and numerous other museums and galleries.