Connections/Crocodiles

My name is Eric Kjellgren and I'm the curator of Oceanic art here at the Metropolitan, and I'm gonna talk today about crocodiles.

When I was a young child, I only got a chance to see alligators and crocodiles in zoos. My first chance to see them in the wild came when we did this traditional

family vacation to Florida, and there was a lake that seemed to be full of old logs. I thought, you know, "gosh I wish I

could see an alligator." And then as I stood at the shore, luckily not very close to it, I realized that every one of those was actually an alligator.

I was both thrilled and a little frightened of this, and I think that actually is something that endures with me even today. New York has its own

crocodilian mythology about alligators living in the sewers. And in some stories, they were supposed to lose all the

pigmentation in their skin and become essentially albino crocodiles, ten feet long, surviving on rats, garbage, and the occasional sewer worker. Fortunately

according to herpetologists, there doesn't seem to be much basis in fact for this, but there was actually a number of years ago

somebody released a caiman into the Harlem Meer, not very far from the Museum now.

You often see crocodiles in these allegorical representations associated either with America, in which case you're seeing alligators, or with Africa, in which case you're seeing crocodiles. This includes America personified as this woman with this great flowing headdress

but just behind her right leg you can see this alligator peeking out. Most of the images before the nineteenth century

are drawn either from stuffed specimens or from other illustrations.

This poor crocodile looks like it was among the most shriveled-up, dried-out natural history specimens in the local museum or noble's collection.

Crocodilians have a very sort of distinctive body shape. It's at once sort of, you know, beautifully flowing sinuous curves, but also a ruggedness.

This watercolor by John Singer Sargent impresses me by the way he's able to render

the shape of an alligator just with a sort of almost amorphous blob of paint.

This crocodile bag actually reminds me very much of my grandmother, who was not a fan of crocodiles or alligators. And I remember watching television with her once about alligators, which of course I thought was fascinating. She said, "Well, you know, I wouldn't mind at all if these things went extinct 'cause I think they're nasty creatures."

These were used as part of an initiation ceremony. You bring the instrument down vertically on the water, and this makes a sound sort of like, "kabooyzhee, kabooyzhee." And that noise was said to be the noise of young men being swallowed by this giant crocodile.

If I was at the zoo and I snapped that photograph on my digital camera, I'd probably just hit the delete key 'cause I didn't get the head, and yet, here I think it is in fact one of the best crocodiles images that I've seen. You see their role as a dangerous, hidden thing.

I've tried to convert some people to my fascination with crocodiles, and actually somewhat succeeded with my wife.

And we actually went on our honeymoon in Australia and took a crocodile watching trip.

They tap things on the water to attract the crocodiles and feed them meat so they'll come out to the boat. And this is all very well because it let's you see the crocodiles, but it also reminds you that these crocodiles associate the boat with food, so that it's wise not to fall out of it if you can avoid it.

Part of the whole sort of mystique and attraction of crocodiles is the fact that they're also dangerous creatures. You could potentially be eaten, not a part

I'd really like to experience.