The Dachshund at the AKC Museum of the Dog

After spending 30 years in St. Louis, the AKC Museum of the Dog returned to New York and officially opened to the public on February 8, 2019.

The museum is conveniently located in the heart of mid-town Manhattan just two blocks from Grand Central Terminal. Our first year was a great success with attendance exceeding that of the previous years in St. Louis by 6-fold and revenues by 13-fold. Our arrival also generated a great deal of media buzz. We conducted over 200 press interviews resulting in over 2100 articles and television appearances reaching nearly 40 million people. Though success is not necessarily measured by numbers.

Exhibitions

Additionally, the year saw the museum present the exhibitions, Women and Dogs in Art in the Early 20th c., Photos: Please Do Not Bend: Highlights from the Catherine Johnson Collection and Mush: A Tribute to Sled Dogs from Arctic Exploration to the Iditarod. Currently, the exhibition we have on display is Presidential Dogs, which highlights the dogs and dog breeds that live in the White House.

Digital Displays

The new museum features numerous state of the art digital and interactive displays, most noticeable, as you approach the building, is the façade projection featuring silhouettes of dogs walking across the front of the building. There is also Find Your Match which will take an image of you and through facial recognition scroll through all 195 AKC recognized breeds to find which breed you most resemble. We have found it to be scream among the millennial crew.

Moving into the gallery there are two Meet the Breeds touch screen tables. Each features a cavalcade of all the AKC breeds scrolling across the table. The visitor can then pull their favorite into the dog house and learn various aspects about the breed.

Perhaps the most popular display is the 7foot-high video screen located in our Dogs on the Job corner where one can train a virtual Lab puppy named Molly. Through the use of motion capture technology, we filmed a real Lab who then responds to your verbal and hand commands on screen.

Library and Activity Center

We are most proud of the success of our library and activity center. Here, visitors are able to peruse over 4000 volumes from the AKC main library and archive. The activity center hosts lectures, films, Meet the Breeds days as well as popular children’s programming such as “Paws to Read.”

Acquisitions

The move from St. Louis to New York has proved to be fortuitous in the area of new acquisitions. In the first half of 2020 the museum has received a number of donations and made a significant purchase. In January, Robert Flanders donated Abraham Hondius’ Amsterdam Dog Market c. 1677 in honor of Walter Goodman. The impressive Old Master canvas displays over 50 dogs with several handlers and customers as well as an array of collars.

In June, we gladly accepted the donation of The Haunt of the Woodcock: Sensation and Bang Bang by the American artist John Martin Tracy.

It is certainly the artist’s masterpiece and quite possibly one of the most important American dog painting in existence. Painted c. 1880, it features two of the seminal Pointers from the Westminster Kennel in Long Island. Sensation went on to become the mascot of the WKC and is featured in their logo. Appropriately, it came from Sean McCarthy, former head of Westminster and a past museum board member.

Finally, after negotiations with Sotheby’s and through the generous donations of museum board members, Gayle Bontecou and David Merriam, we were able to secure a massive painting by George Earl depicting an imagined field trial in Bala, North Wales around 1877. It is essentially a giant group portrait of all of the important breeders, owners, handlers and their dogs of the day. Each are identified and the cast reads like a who’s who of the early days of the sport. I humbly refer to it as the “Night Watch” of dogdom.

Conservation

Through appeals to the AKC Parent Clubs and members we were able to launch the “Dog Save the Queen” campaign to restore our carousel Bullmastiff, “Queen” and “The Rake’s Progress” to conserve our George Earl painting of the Irish Water Spaniel “Rake.”

Store

The recent lockdown has caused us to scramble to introduce an online store which we opened in April. The store features high-quality and exclusive items for dog lovers young and old. We have several Dachshund items for sale, such as a cuddly plush toy, a festive Holiday ornament, socks, and more. To see all our product, go to www.museumofthedogstore.org.

Dachshund

The AKC Museum of the Dog and the AKC has about 40 total artworks featuring Dachshunds in its collections. Several of these pieces were donated by the estate of Paul Tolliver, a longtime fancier of the breed. One painting of note is Two Dachshunds with Hare by Hermine Biedermann-Arendts. Created in 1880, this piece shows the result of a hunt, painted in a style that is straightforward and carefully observed. This piece shows a visual history of the Dachshund as a working dog.

Other Dachshund artists in the collection include the Royal Doulton ceramic company, Enjar Vindeldt, Marguerite Fould-Stern, and Emmanuel Fremiet. Some small Dachshund sculptures will be featured in our next pop-up exhibition, In From the Cold: Viennese ColdPainted Bronzes, opening November 11, 2020.