The New York State Museum | Pleistocene Tundra Mural

I worked with the design team at the New York State Museum in Albany, New York to help create background murals for their new long-term Ice Ages Exhibit. (Find more information about visiting here.)

The smaller of the two murals I created for them shows extinct species that were endemic to New York during the early part of the ice age (during glacial advance), inhabiting an ecosystem known as glacial or shrub tundra. The habitat is mostly carpeted by grasses and moss with some willow shrubs and punctuated by broken leftover rocks carried by glaciers. The mural features Woolly Mammoth, Caribou, Muskox, Arctic Fox, and Collared Lemming. 

Because the murals needed to be printed and installed on-site, these were painted digitally at full scale, and this image covered more than 26 feet of wall from floor to ceiling (over 7 feet tall), and included space to accommodate the display of real fossil artifacts from the museum's collections. (©Beth Zaiken)