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Our long battle to get some sort of recognition for animal artists has been a lonely one. To be honest, most of the support has come from the lunatic fringe and people who thought we were interested in art about animals, but now the whole field of animal art has entered a new plane thanks to the well-known German artist Rosemarie Trockel. As a curious link we met Trockel when she was in New Zealand when the City Gallery in Wellington opened the current building with a big survey show of her work curated by Greg Burke. 

 Anyway, Trockel may be one of the first artist curators to include an animal artist in a public art museum exhibition with her selection of work by Tilda, an Orangutan artist from the Cologne Zoo. Tilda joins a number of other untrained (human) artists whose work is presented alongside that of Trockel herself in Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos at the New Museum in New York. 

Artist support like this is rare. The only other instance we have been able to find is when a work by Congo (1954-1964) the famous Chimpanzee artist (discovered and given his first pencil by zoologist Desmond Morris) was owned by Pablo Picasso. More animal art facts as they come to hand. 

Image: Three paintings by Tilda hanging at the New Museum as part of Rosemarie Trockel’s work Less sauvage than others