Wall Street may have its bulls and bears running around, but another section of Manhattan has been taken over by a herd of 100 elephants. Actually, they’re elephant sculptures and a display is taking place in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan that runs from West 14th Street south to Gansevoort Street and from the Hudson River on the west to Hudson Street. It’s in that area that the display of 100 life-sized elephant sculptures can be seen through Oct. 20.
The elephants, weighing several hundred pounds each, have been placed along 9th Avenue, Horatio and 8th avenues, on 14th Street and at Gansevoort Landing on the edge of the West Side Highway.
The elephant sculptures were made by the Coexistence Collective, a community of 200 indigenous artisans living within South India’s Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. They are made from pieces of an invasive plant species called Lantana camara. It’s an invasive weed that has spread across about 115,000 square miles of India, threatening protected forests and preserves.
The traveling exhibit is known as The Great Elephant Migration. It is on a one-year tour of the U.S. that began in Newport, Rhode Island. The Manhattan-based nonprofit Elephant Family USA was instrumental in bringing the exhibit to the U.S. It states its mission as “to harness the power of creativity and storytelling to inspire and enable human populations to share space with wildlife.”
The exhibit also is being used as a fundraising vehicle to help support various conservation efforts and also to support people around the world who have found ways to coexist with wildlife, including elephants. At least 22 non-governmental organizations are due to benefit from the funds that are expected to be raised.
The exhibit travels to Miami after its stay in Manhattan, and eventually makes its way to the West Coast.
