The Consulting Team and Process

To better understand the disciplines that engaged Mark Catesby and to better understand why the value of his work transcends three centuries, the Trust enlisted the expertise of international authorities on Catesby and the various aspects of his work and milieu. The consulting team has ensured that the script and treatment for “The Curious Mister Catesby” accurately and faithfully depicts Catesby’s roles as artist, naturalist, scientist, and explorer. The members of the team included:

• Alan Feduccia, S. K. Heninger Professor of Biology and Geology, University of North Carolina, is a distinguished scholar in the field of ornithology, who has written extensively on the evolution of birds. The author of Catesby’s Birds of Colonial America, Dr. Feduccia’s brings considerable knowledge of Catesby’s ornithological studies in America and the subjects of those studies.

• Dr. David Gordon, Manager, Coastal Programs, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, is an ornithologist and an authority on wildlife conservation. Dr. Gordon is particularly knowledgeable about the geography, topography, and biology of South Carolina’s Lowcountry and those areas that have remained undisturbed since Catesby’s time.

• Dr. Suzanne Linder is the author of numerous books and articles on the history of South Carolina. She will shed light on the colonial period of South Carolina’s Lowcountry, where much of Catesby’s work took place. This is an area that has not been well-developed in previous studies of Catesby, and Dr. Linder has been very effective at illuminating where and how he did his work here.

• Dr. Amy Meyers, Director, Yale Collection of British Art, Yale University, is the co-author of Mark Catesby’s Natural History of America and author of Empire’s Nature – Mark Catesby’s New World Vision. Dr. Meyers is viewed as this country’s foremost scholar on Mark Catesby, and her broad knowledge of Catesby and his work has helped place him in the context of the history of art in England and America, particularly the 18th century.

• Leslie Overstreet, Curator of Natural-History Rare Books, Special Collections Department, Smithsonian Institution Libraries, has given a number of public lectures on Catesby and his Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. She offers the project a special area of expertise that focuses on the engraving, printing, and publishing of works of natural history, with a scholarly insight into the contributions of other naturalists of Catesby’s time.

• Henrietta McBurney Ryan, former Deputy Curator of the Print Room, Royal Library, Windsor Castle, is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on the art of Mark Catesby. She is the co-author with Dr. Meyers of Mark Catesby’s Natural History and is currently working on a catalogue raisonné of Catesby for the Royal Collection. Her extensive knowledge of Catesby’s original watercolors, including the few pieces not at Windsor Castle has helped put perspective on the artistic, scientific and personal values of Catesby’s art.

Team members attended a pre-script conference in Charleston, South Carolina over the weekend of April 23^rd 2005, where they met with the film’s scriptwriter, director, and executive producer to develop a script outline.  Those not in attendance also reviewed and commented on the appropriate contents and focus of the script based on the research already completed.  The degree of unanimity was remarkable for a group with such diverse backgrounds and disciplines, most of whom had never met each other before.