On Friday evening, in the heart of Beverly Hills, a convoy of brightly decorated trucks—festooned in traditional Indian lorry art—pulled into the Eva and Marc Stern Arrival Court at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. Inside them: 100 life-sized elephant sculptures, made not of stone or bronze but of a humble invasive plant. This was the final stop of The Great Elephant Migration—a 5,000-mile public art journey that has moved through cities, tribal lands, and national parks across the United States—and the elephants arrived swathed in something new: more than 70 bespoke blankets, created by designers and Indigenous communities around the world in a ceremonial offering called “Wrapped in History.”
The sculptures themselves are the work of the Real Elephant Collective, a sustainable, community-owned enterprise of 200 Indigenous artisans from India’s Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. Using Lantana camara—an aggressive weed that chokes native forests—the artisans spent years handcrafting each elephant based on a real-life counterpart.
Bulls, cows, calves, and tuskers were shaped with anatomical precision, their forms bent and woven from dried reeds in a process as environmentally conscious as it was emotionally resonant. The stop in Los Angeles marked the first time the Real Elephant Collective had joined the US tour in person—representing a powerful reunion between creator and creation.
Since debuting during the pandemic in London’s Hyde Park, the herd has trotted through Newport, Manhattan, Miami Beach, Jackson Hole, and more. But Los Angeles was something different: a ceremonial close, a new artistic layer, and a powerful gesture of reverence. “Blankets are wrapped around members of the community as a sign of respect,” said Ruth Ganesh, the UK-born conservationist and co-creator of the project. “This echoes traditions across many Indigenous cultures, where blankets symbolize protection, honor, and belonging. In the context of the Migration, each draped elephant becomes a living monument—wrapped in collective memory and care.”
The idea for the blanketing was born last fall, during an All Night Smoke hosted by the Blackfeet Nation, where Ganesh saw elders and guests alike arrive wrapped in traditional blankets. What followed was a new curatorial initiative led by Indian designer Vikram Goyal, who invited collaborators from the worlds of fashion, Indigenous craft, and textile heritage to create ceremonial pieces—each infused with ancestral motifs and messages of coexistence.
“In Indigenous cultures around the world, blankets hold profound significance,” said Goyal, who contributed his own design. “They are often intricately woven with traditional patterns and colors, representing a tribe’s history, identity, and spiritual beliefs.” Goyal’s blanket took inspiration from his repoussé metalwork, translating a gilded wall sculpture—based on a 17th-century Rajput manuscript called The Book of Dreams—into an embroidered textile layered with symbols of good fortune: the Gajaraja (Elephant King), Gajasimha (Elephant-Lion), blackbuck antelope, and parrots in a flowering tree.
Other contributors to “Wrapped in History” included Ralph Lauren, Tarun Tahiliani, Sabyasachi, Diane von Furstenberg, Johanna Ortiz, Ozwald Boateng, and the Navajo Nation, alongside India’s craft communities and schools like Chanakya, whose women artisans stitched together a textile map of India using techniques drawn from the Deccan plateau to Assam. “Craft has always evolved within contemporary frameworks,” Goyal noted. “Textile has long led by this example.”
The event began with a moment of theater: a Hertz truck, decorated in florals and flags, ceremonially “broke the finish line,” bursting through a banner on Santa Monica Boulevard to cheers from the crowd. As guests followed the elephants across the street to Beverly Gardens Park, they encountered the newly blanketed sculptures standing in quiet formation.
One of the most emotionally charged moments came with the arrival of Chaimu, a sculpted calf based on a real orphaned elephant rescued in Kenya in 2009 by the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. Actress and longtime elephant advocate Kristin Davis, who helped save Chaimu as a baby, was on hand for the reunion. “Seeing Chaimu here today, so lovingly sculpted, thousands of miles from where she was originally rescued, honestly takes my breath away,” Davis told Vogue. “To see her honored in this way, as part of a global call for coexistence, fills me with such hope.”
She continued: “As much as this work is about raising awareness, it’s also about building empathy—about showing people that these animals are intelligent, emotional beings with family bonds and memories. That’s what makes The Great Elephant Migration so powerful: it brings together Indigenous knowledge, conservation, and creativity to tell these stories in a way that truly touches people.”
Choosing Los Angeles for the finale wasn’t about getting a starry guest list, either. Ganesh pointed to the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing in nearby Agoura Hills, the largest of its kind in the world, as a mirror to the herd’s message. “This will benefit the less famous but equally enchanting residents of LA and Beverly Hills—mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes,” she said. “It’s an incredible gesture by humanity that chimes with the herd’s message for the human race: to share space.”
Though the herd’s migration ends here, its work does not. The “Wrapped in History” blankets will be exhibited throughout July and auctioned online beginning July 2, with proceeds benefiting more than 20 conservation NGOs. But for one last evening in Beverly Hills, the elephants stood blanketed and still—a woven call to remember, protect, and coexist.
