We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals.

— Henry Beston, The Outermost House

I went to Commonwealth Avenue expecting an art installation and left feeling like I’d crashed a family reunion. The Great Elephant Migration is a traveling public-art and conservation project bringing 100 life-size elephant sculptures to the Mall from August 8 through September 13, 2026. It’s delivered by Elephant Family USA, a nonprofit initiative of Coexistence Story Inc., in support of human-wildlife coexistence and conservation work around the world. But none of that description quite prepares you for actually walking into the herd.

These aren’t imaginary elephants. Each sculpture is modeled on a real elephants living in the wild, mostly in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India, and each carries its own name. Wandering the Boston herd, I met Anya, Eshan, Krishna, Mayflower, Palash, Tara, Pavan, and dozens more. Their ages, sizes, postures, all the small physical quirks that make an animal individual, were carried over into the sculpture. It stopped feeling like a display and started feeling like being part of the family.

They’re handmade from Lantana camara, an invasive plant that’s overrun huge stretches of Indian forest, woven around steel frames. About 300 Indigenous artisans, people from various communities, who’ve lived beside wild elephants for generations, build them by hand. Knowing that changes how I looked at the surface of each sculpture, and I was astounded by the skillful work and dedication to this important project.

There’s something satisfying, too, in how the materials enhance the win for all involved. Lantana crowds out native plants and degrades habitat, so clearing it helps the forest even before a single sculpture gets built. Then the invasive plant becomes art, the art becomes income for the artisans, and the finished elephants raise money and awareness for the conservation work that started the whole cycle. It’s the rare project where every aspect of the venture is doing something good.

The sculptures are also for sale. Proceeds go back into conservation, and the prices track their size in a way I found oddly moving: calves at $8,500, adolescents at $14,500, matriarchs at $18,000, and the great tuskers at $22,500. A calf stands about 3½ feet and weighs around 40 kilograms; a matriarch can reach eight feet, stretch 12 feet long, and weigh around 250 kilograms. Many of the Boston elephants are already spoken for, while the calves are sold out!

I felt that knowing a little about elephants made the experience richer. They live in tight-knit social worlds, keep close family bonds, and recognize huge numbers of other individuals. They talk to each other in trumpets and rumbles, and in low-frequency sounds that travel much farther, picking up vibrations through the ground with their feet and trunks. Their trunks alone are remarkable tools: strong enough to uproot a tree, gentle enough to turn over something tiny.

They comfort each other when they’re distressed, remember individuals and places for years, and linger, almost mournfully, near the remains of elephants who’ve died. Their famous “memory” isn’t just a nice phrase; it’s survival equipment, holding the location of water, the route of a migration, the identity of a friend or a danger.

So walking through the herd wasn’t like walking past a hundred copies of the same animal. It felt more like meeting a hundred individuals who happen to belong to the same big, close family, which was, for me,  a small reminder that wildlife isn’t really made of “populations,” but it’s made of specific lives with specific histories, same as us.

What I loved most is that nothing stood between the herd and me. I could walk right up to the huge adults, find a calf tucked in beside its mother, get close enough to see the weave of the lantana, and look them straight in the eye. Arriving at the exhibit felt as if I stumbled into a gathering already in progress.

I loved witching the kids, as they weaved their way between the sculptures, ran their hands over the rough surfaces, reached for trunks, posed next to calves, craned their necks up at the tuskers like they were meeting giants. A six-year-old girl showed up with her mother and sister, notebook in hand, and after making her way through the herd she sat on the ground and began to draw them. A father with a two- and a five-year-old joked that his kids were “probably not going to let us leave.” I photographed a little girl talking to and feeding one of the creatures. More than one adult just stopped mid-stride, caught off guard by the sight of a herd of elephants standing in the middle of a city street.

What stayed with me was how naturally that all unfolded — delight first, then curiosity, then something closer to real care. None of the kids I watched needed to know anything about conservation, or invasive lantana, or the artisans who’d spent hours on each sculpture. They just ran between the elephants, picked their favorites, and talked to them as if they were school friends. The facts might come later. The kids best demonstrated the quiet genius of the whole project, which doesn’t lead with a lesson. It lets you fall for something first, and trusts that the caring will follow.

As I think back to the experience I’m moved by how this  impressive piece of public art has turned an ordinary city street into a place where people and animals just belonged together. I think the kids understood that before any of the adults did. They spontaneously walked up, touched, wondered. It’s a good thing to be reminded of, especially with everything we’re told to worry about when it comes to the natural world: the facts can wait. The feeling comes first.