Gorilla on the Loose!

Colo, the first gorilla born in captivity, entered the world at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio on this date in 1956.

Our usually-captive Gorilla by Felipe Archuleta has escaped the museum. He was last seen in El Paso, Texas and is reported to be headed for the Orlando Museum of Art in Florida, where Arte Latino: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum opens tomorrow.

Collector Bert Hemphill commissioned the Gorilla after a visit to Archuleta when he noticed the artist's granddaughter playing with a smaller version. When carving animals not found locally, Archuleta looks at pictures in children's books and popular magazines. He based this carving on photographs from a National Geographic article about mountain gorillas of Africa.

Source: Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: For the National Museum of American Art by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990).

Pictured: Felipe Archuleta, 1910–91, Gorilla, 1976, carved and painted cottonwood with glue and sawdust, 40 x 27 1/4 x 42 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson.