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Three oversized bronze statues of the American bison were installed outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington as part of the United States’ 250th birthday celebration, organizers said. The sculptures—cast in bronze and designed to stand larger than real-life bison—made their public debut Friday.
The statues depict a bull, a cow and a calf and now form a permanent display outside the museum, according to the Associated Press. The work is tied to the bison’s status as the national mammal, a designation created by federal law signed in 2016.
The bison became the nation’s official mammal under a law signed by former President Barack Obama in 2016, the report said. The Associated Press also noted that millions of bison once roamed the Great Plains and were nearly driven to extinction in the 1800s.
Gary Staab, a paleoartist, designed and sculpted the statues, according to the Associated Press. He described the effort as a conservation story centered on an animal specific to North America.
Staab said, “It’s a wonderful story of conservation working, it’s a story of people seeing a need and getting behind that to conserve an animal that is specific to North America,” in remarks included with the announcement. He added, “They really represent a really unbelievably beautiful and unique thing about North America.”
Staab designed and sculpted the bison statues in Kearney, Missouri, where he works full-time creating animal and historical-artifact sculptures for museums. For the bison project, he sculpted full-size models in foam and clay before the figures were cast in bronze and assembled at a foundry in Colorado.
Staab said it took about four months to complete the sculptures, which he called “lighting fast” given their size.