"Bald Eagle," a 1983, 38 x 38-inch screenprint on Lenox Museum board by Andy Warhol, from the Endangered Species portfolio.

About five years ago, staff at the High Desert Museum began anticipating 2023 and the 50th anniversary of the passing of the Endangered Species Act, according to Dana Whitelaw, executive director of the nonprofit museum just south of Bend.

That gave the museum plenty of time to dream up a multi-exhibition celebration of the law, which aims to protect vulnerable species from extinction.

The celebration began with the current exhibitions, “Wolves: Photography by Ronan Donovan,” which opened Oct. 21 and closes Feb. 11, and “Endangered in the High Desert,” which followed on Nov. 11 and closes July 7.

On Saturday, comes the public opening of the museum’s third exhibition in its golden anniversary lineup, and for art lovers, it’s a doozy: “Andy Warhol’s Endangered Species: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation.”

As Hayley Brazier, the High Desert Museum’s Donald M. Kerr curator of natural history, told Bulletin reporter Morgan Owen in October, there is “nowhere else in the world where you’re going to get that many lenses on not only the Endangered Species Act, but the individual species that are featured and protected.”

Warhol enters the chat

Warhol, of course, is the 20th-century pop art icon whose turn from work as a commercial artist to silk screen printing and pop art, a movement that had begun in the 1950s, led him to prominence in the early 1960s with his with his Campbell’s Soup works and silkscreen portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy and others. The 10 pieces of Warhol’s Endangered Species series were commissioned by a pair of art dealers, Ronald and Frayda Feldman, 10 years after the passing of the Endangered Species Act.

Warhol’s brash, instantly recognizable style brought attention to the plight of 10 species struggling for survival: African Elephant, Pine Barrens Tree Frog, Giant Panda, Bald Eagle, Siberian Tiger, San Francisco Silverspot, Orangutan, Grevy’s Zebra, Black Rhinoceros and Bighorn Ram. (By the way, seven of those species are still at risk of extinction, according to the museum.)

The High Desert Museum’s celebration of Warhol’s art doesn’t stop there: It also includes select works from Warhol’s Skull series, his Vanishing Animals series and one of those Monroe pieces that helped usher Warhol to widespread recognition. Speaking of recognizing, Warhol after seeing the Velvet Underground in a nightclub, helped introduce the Velvet Underground to a wider audience and cult-legend status.

“Andy Warhol’s Endangered Species” displays through April 7.