Plate 131 American Robin 

Curator: What strikes me first is the vulnerability—those little chicks with their beaks wide open, clamoring. It’s a tender kind of chaos. Editor: Precisely. This is John James Audubon’s "Plate 131 American Robin," a painting, drawing and etching, actually a print from his monumental "Birds of America." Note the meticulous detail. Curator: Detail indeed. But there’s something more than scientific observation. It’s like Audubon is revealing a hidden theater, capturing this fleeting moment of hunger, need. It almost feels devotional in its intensity. Editor: That intensity is partly due to Audubon's process. He posed the birds himself, using wires to fix them in life-like positions which, though controversial now, allowed for incredible accuracy and dramatic compositions for audiences back then, starved for views into the American wilderness. His project relied on public spectacle. Curator: I imagine those birds posed very still… or not at all! The life force bursts out in the angles of those outstretched necks; you can almost hear their chirps. But there’s a darker side, of course—we're looking at the specimens on the table... Editor: Indeed. While seemingly celebrating nature, “Birds of America” fueled an increased interest in ornithology and, inevitably, increased hunting of those very birds it sought to immortalize. Art often performs double duty. The rise in popular science went hand in hand with capitalist exploitation. Curator: And yet…I can't shake the sense that Audubon felt a genuine reverence. Doesn't the delicate watercolour and engraving almost compensate for the original violence, a transfiguration maybe, a desire to stop the unstoppable, death, erasure? A paradox, isn't it, how capturing freezes existence? Editor: Perhaps that’s where its lasting power lies, this constant play between scientific objectivity and romantic yearning, between witnessing beauty and contributing to its demise. We witness in the nest something eternal about beginnings, and a sense of longing. Curator: Precisely, yes...a strange immortality machine. It's sobering but so beautiful and affecting. Editor: Indeed, this singular piece encapsulates both an era’s ambition and its blind spots.