Connecticut Has a New Arrival, A History Making Gorilla

King Nyani is new to Greenwich, Connecticut's Bruce Museum. The statue arrived at the museum on Monday, April 22, 2024 (Earth Day) and has been a hit with guests since.

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King Nyani was created by the husband-wife artist team of Gillie and Marc Schattner. The statue weighs an astounding 5,000 pounds and is one of three bronze gorillas in its series. The other two reside at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia and the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago.

According to the Bruce Museum website, the artists were inspired to create King Nyani by the kindness of a mountain gorilla silverback in the wild. The website adds:

"They sought to inspire a similar sense of awe and familial interconnectedness with the world while raising awareness for the conservation issues that gorillas face. Both species of gorilla, the mountain and eastern lowland,  can be found in the tropical forests of equatorial Africa and are considered critically endangered, due to the devastating combined effects of habitat loss, poaching, and disease. Only 1,063 mountain gorillas are estimated to survive, but populations are slowly recovering thanks to vigorous conservation measures."

Hyper Allergic says:

Children have been joyously scrambling onto “King Nyani (BIG)” (2021), a 23-foot-long, 8-and-a-half-foot-tall primate

The Bruce Museum is conveniently located at 1 Museum, Drive in Greenwich, CT. The museum is open from Tuesday-Sunday from 10:00am-5:00pm with the last admission at 4:30pm. Museum officials say reservations are required for groups of 10 or more, otherwise they are suggested but not necessary. Check for more information and pricing at the Bruce Museum website.

I say any bronze gorilla, is a history-making gorilla. They are not monkeying around at Bruce Museum.