Wolves: Photography by Ronan Donovan

November 5, 2022 - April 30, 2023

Exhibition open November 5, 2022 – April 30, 2023

The National Museum of Wildlife Art will debut the traveling photography exhibition Wolves: Photography by Ronan Donovan, featuring Donovan’s stunning images and videos of wild wolves in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and Ellesmere Island in the high Canadian Arctic. Since 2014, National Geographic Explorer and photographer Ronan Donovan has examined the relationship between wild wolves and humans in order to better understand the animals, our shared history, and what drives the persistent human-wolf conflict.

The exhibition, created by National Geographic Society and the National Museum of Wildlife Art, will display images and videos—highlighting the contrast between wolves that live in perceived competition with humans and wolves that live without human intervention.

Wolves will introduce visitors to the daily lives of wolves in the Arctic—how they hunt, play, travel, and rest in one of the harshest environments on Earth—with unparalleled intimacy. By contrast, the wolves of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are fearful of humans, making it nearly impossible to document their daily lives. One of the distinctions made clear in the images is the ability to see wolf pups in the Arctic, which allowed Donovan to document behaviors he had never seen in Yellowstone. Donovan attributes these differences to the fact that Arctic wolves rarely experience negative encounters with humans or view them as a threat—it’s like going back to a time when humans learned from wolves and subsisted on the same prey.

“Wolves are such a fascinating animal to me because of how complex their relationship is with humans,” Donovan says. “Wolves were the first animals humans domesticated some 30,000 years ago and they have lived alongside us ever since as guardians, workers, and companions. Yet as humans moved to more sedentary lives, raising what amounts to easy prey in the form of livestock, wolves have found themselves in conflict with humans.”

As wolves in North America are increasingly under threat due to recent extreme wolf-control laws, and humans continue to impinge on the land and food sources that these animals need to survive, Donovan hopes that his photos will provide people with a better understanding of these often misunderstood animals. He also hopes they will see wolves as they are: powerful, intelligent, social mammals that have evolved to live in family structures similar to humans.

“The way that a culture views wolves can reveal a lot about how a society interacts with their environment—is there a belief of power over animals, or is there a collective shared landscape?” Donovan says. “As a visual storyteller, my goal is to portray my subjects in their most authentic way by showing the challenges they face as well as the tender moments between family members in order to evoke a shared emotion that the viewer can connect with.”

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2.1.P.2 Photograph by Ronan Donovan, National Geographic Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming Although they are skilled hunters, wolves are not above taking advantage of a free meal. The matriarch of the Mollie’s pack, identified as 779F (right), closes in on the carcass of a drowned bison with other members of her pack. The largest female wolf ever recorded in Yellowstone, she lived to be eight years old—a ripe age for a wild wolf.

2.6.P.4 Photograph by Ronan Donovan, National Geographic Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming A biologist shoots a wolf known as 980M using a tranquilizer gun from a helicopter. 980M, a five-year-old, 121-pound (55-kilogram) male, was the lead male of the Mollie’s pack at the time. A few minutes after being shot with a dart, 980M fell unconscious. Researchers then took measurements and samples and fit him with a new tracking collar.

3.5.P.1 Photograph by Ronan Donovan, National Geographic Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada A mother greets her six-week-old pup as a yearling female rests nearby. The yearling helped attend to both this pup and the pups of another den, presumably also members of the yearling’s extended family.

3.4.P.5 Photograph by Ronan Donovan, National Geographic Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada Hunts in the Arctic often last for hours. This photo shows a standoff between wolves and muskoxen which ended after six hours; the muskoxen held higher ground and successfully defended themselves until the wolves gave up.

3.1.P.3 Photograph by Ronan Donovan, National Geographic Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada The Polygon pack scours Greely Fiord for muskoxen and arctic hares. This hunt lasted 40 hours and spanned 65 miles (105 kilometers)—the longest distance ever traveled by the pack’s four pups at the time. By the end of their trek, the pups were whimpering with apparent displeasure as they struggled to keep up with the adults

1.1.P.2 Photograph by Ronan Donovan, National Geographic “As a field biologist-turned-photographer, I strive to combine storytelling with scientific foundations as a way to draw people in and to tell stories about our rapidly changing world. I hope viewers can look into the wild nature portrayed in these images and be compelled to stand and protect it.” -Ronan Donovan

3.3.P.1 Photograph by Ronan Donovan, National Geographic Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada A wolf’s howl can travel as far as 10 miles (16kilometers) in a vast, open landscape like Ellesmere Island. Here, sisters One Eye and Bright Eyes howl to family members who were moving south to survey their territory. Eventually the pack split, leaving the tired pups behind at a previous year’s den while the adults continued to travel south.

3.5.P.2 Photograph by Ronan Donovan, National Geographic Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada Members of the Polygon pack greet one another. One pup nuzzles the pack’s aging matriarch, White Scarf (far right). Nuzzling is a common method of greeting. A second pup is playfully biting a feather while nuzzling Slender Foot.

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