"The Duck Stamp Competition"
2000-11-13 until 2000-11-26
San Bernardino County Museum, Fisk Gallery
Redlands, CA, USA United States of America

The top 100 paintings of the yearly Federal Duck Stamp competition continue to be a major feature of the Wildlife Art Festival. In the early history of the United States, wide expanses of frontier and abundant wildlife and waterfowl were taken for granted. But as population increased, marshes and wetlands were drained for agricultural use, and city populations made increasing demands for fresh food. With wetlands loss and market hunting, formerly vast waterfowl populations faced extinction.

Public awareness that waterfowl populations were threatened led Congress to enact the Migratory Bird Conservation Act in 1929. This law was largely symbolic, since it contained no funding provisions. It was the passage of the Robinson Pittman Act of 1934—the Duck Stamp law—that provided funding for the protection of wetlands and waterfowl. The enactment of the 1934 legislation, supported by conservationists, hunters, and sportsmen nationwide and spurred on by the political cartoons of Jay N. Darling, required the purchase by every waterfowl hunter of an annual federal migratory waterfowl conservation stamp.

Until 1949, an artist was commissioned to design the yearly stamp. Since that time, a contest system has been used to select the design. Today, more than a thousand entries are received each year, and the stamps are purchased not only by hunters but by collectors, art patrons, and non-hunting conservationists. The proceeds from stamp sales are the single largest source of funding for wetlands habitat conservation and enhancement.

IMAGE:
First place, 1999 competition:
Mottled Duck,
by Adam Grimm

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of California

Other Important Exhibitions in California