Christensen, Gardell Dano

Gardell Dano Christensen: To Tell the World of Faraway Places

By Ardis E. Parshall, Keepapitchinin, May 11, 2009

�

Gardell Dano Christensen was an Idaho boy, born in Shelley in 1907, and raised as a Latter-day Saint. He loved the outdoors, but he was an artist rather than a farmer, a modeler of clay, and he longed to devote his life to something that used his unique skills. Raising sugar beets wasn�t going to do the trick. He was in high school when he read an article about Carl Akeley, a New York farm boy who had gone on to become a great African explorer, accompanying Teddy Roosevelt on one of his expeditions. He was also one of the most notable of the early 20th century naturalists, a taxidermist who specialized in museum dioramas showing African animals in realistic poses in natural settings. Some of his pre-World War I dioramas of lions and gorillas are still displayed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

The article stirred a passionate response in Gardell � �There was work that my talents were crying for.�

Two years later [1928, I think, but I may be off] I decided not to put it off any longer and so I landed one cold spring morning in New York City without a cent and not knowing a soul. What followed would make a sermon. That was on Friday. By Wednesday I was started on my career.

To work at anything for the American Museum was the realization of a dream � a dream just beginning. Of course I had to begin at the bottom but what did that matter. The world was before me now and I was young. For seven years I labored and then the dawn came. I was asked to represent the Museum on an expedition to Africa. Would I go? Would anyone go! What had I been working for? I was in Africa for a year. Then the next year to Alaska � off every year for the next four years � to collect many kinds of animals.

�

Gardell worked for the museum until 1941, then sought other work, generally with western museums. He continued to do taxidermy but also developed a less destructive technique for bringing the wilderness and its animals to school children and other city dwellers: through miniature models. �