The 314 Birds Flocking to Harlem

It wasn’t that Avi Gitler had any special love for birds. Sure, the gallerist had appreciated a few feathered dudes in his time, spying on them during hikes and while traveling around his native New York City. But when he opened the Gitler &_____ gallery in Harlem’s Hamilton Heights, he wanted a way to introduce art into the neighborhood.

So he looked to its history and found the bird man—John James Audubon, the ornithologist whose illustrated Birds of America is considered one of the more complete compendiums of birds, well, ever. Audubon’s estate sat in Hamilton Heights; the artist and naturalist is also buried there. So Gitler commissioned a few artists to paint birds on the roll-down gates of local businesses (with their permission, of course).