Read this Wildlife Art Journal article

The year was 1976:  Equatorial Africa experienced its first outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus; the UnitedStates commemorated its second century of nationhood; the Concord took its virgin supersonic trans-Atlantic flight; the Irish Republican Army detonated bombs in London’s West End to protest British rule in Northern Ireland, Soweto township, part of metropolitan Johannesburg, erupted in a major uprising against Apartheid; Apple Computer formed as a company and, with horror or squealing delight depending upon one’s point of view— disco ruled the Earth.

In that same year, when the little-known Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum hatched an exhibition centered on artistic interpretations of birds, a prevailing motif —at least in the Upper Midwest of America — was something now known as  “ducks to the left, ducks to the right.”

Like disco, it still has its detractors and ardent admirers.

Mallards, pintails, canvasbacks, wood ducks, teal, even coot, were prolifically portrayed lifting off or landing on rural marshes.  “Limited edition” prints of those same scenes filled the dens of middle American homes, lakeside cabin retreats and the boardrooms of suburban office complexes.

The popularity of waterfowl art indeed was a reflection of the times and it brought no small amount of snickering from many corners of the art world, including from the art establishment in Europe that looked upon it as quaint, unsophisticated and so very American provincial.

But no matter if one was a student in Minneapolis, New York City, Chicago,Toronto, London, Paris, Pietermaritzburg, Stockholm,...