Beloved Life-Sized Elephant Sculptures Rumble Into Texas

The herd is on the move! The hit traveling public art show “The Great Elephant Migration,” featuring 100 Indian elephants crafted by Indigenous artisans from invasive weeds, just arrived in Houston. It is free to the public and on view Hermann Park, roving across the Commons with smaller groups outside the Houston Museum of Natural Science and the Texas Medical Center.

“The Great Elephant Migration is more than an art installation—it is a call to action and a place to experience joy,” Cara Lambright, the president CEO of the Hermann Park Conservancy, said in a statement. “We are inviting our community to be part of a worldwide movement to protect ecosystems, eradicate invasive species, and inspire change. These are shared values that span continents.”

Each individual sculpture is based on a real-life elephant, mostly ones living in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in south India. But the Houston edition of the show is adding the herd’s largest member yet, memorializing the late, 10-foot-tall Kenyan elephant Matt, who died in 2019 at the age of 52. His migration across the country, tracked by GPS since 2002, provided researchers invaluable insight into the lives and movements of African elephants.

“The Great Elephant Migration” is the brainchild of Ruth Ganesh, a trustee of the U.K. NGO Elephant Family, which is dedicated to saving Asian elephants. The project is a fundraising effort, and has already sold over $3 million-worth of life-size sculptures to benefit 22 conservation non-governmental organizations, or NGOs. A baby elephant costs $8,000, while an adult male, known as a “tusker,” tops out at $26,000.

Ganesh has previously spearheaded other art fundraising initiatives to support the species, such as the Big Egg Hunt, a public art installation of large-scale artist-designed eggs that appeared in New York in 2014 and is currently on view in London, where it first debuted in 2012.

With scientist and elephant researcher Tarsh Thekaekara, Ganesh founded the Real Elephant Collective, the 200-member strong artisan group in Nilgiri that makes each sculpture. (As the herd crisscrosses the globe, the artisans make new elephants to order for each new purchase.)

“Creating these elephants provides financial stability, status, and pride to 200 members of the Soligas, Bettakurumbas, Kattunayakan, and Paniyas communities, who coexist with the real wild elephants the herd is based on,” Ganesh said in a statement.

The sculptures are made from lantana camara, which is an invasive species in both India and Texas. In addition to harvesting the plant to be used for the artwork, the project is also using it to make nutrient-rich biochar, a black carbon made from agricultural waste products.

As the local NGO beneficiary in Houston, the Hermann Park Conservancy will use its share of the project proceeds to fight the spread of invasive species in the park. One of Houston’s most beloved green spaces, Hermann Park features a variety of landscapes, from native grasslands to prairies to wooded areas.

“The Great Elephant Migration” first launched during India’s Kochi Biennale in 2019. It appeared in London in 2021, and in 2024 at the Lalbagh Botanical Garden in Bangalore, India, before heading to the U.S. last summer. After making their way down the East Coast, from Newport, Rhode Island, down to New York and Miami Beach, the elephants have now begun their journey West.

They will reach their final destination of Los Angeles in July, after further stops in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and Browning, Montana. The final leg of the journey will see the herd travel via a convoy of electric trucks adorned with traditional Indian lorry art.

Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com