Jim Gary (March 17, 1939 – January 14, 2006) was an American sculptor popularly known for his large, colorful creations of dinosaurs made from discarded automobile parts.

[2] Jim Gary is the only sculptor ever invited to present a solo exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., which opened on April 12, 1990.

In January 2006, Time stated that Gary's work "delighted kids as well as curators, including those at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, where he had an acclaimed solo show in 1990."

During the same month, on January 24, 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported in an article, Jim Gary, 66; Artist Who Created Playful Dinosaur Skeletons From Car Parts, that some critics compared Jim Gary's sculptures with Pablo Picasso's famous Bull's Head sculpture, made from a bicycle seat and handlebars.

For almost a year he secretly slept in the garage of the Sterner family, a prominent Monmouth County couple in the same community, who employed him regularly.

Shortly thereafter, applying these welding skills, he began making sculptures that he marketed as architectural elements, and showing his fine art in the New York metropolitan area.

Gary's fine art—such as the life-sized Universal Woman—wall units, bronze portraits and busts, and abstracts consistently won top prizes when submitted in the professional show circuits of New York and the surrounding states.

Impromptu parades formed as drivers followed the dinosaurs to their destination or a stopping point, where people milled around the trucks asking questions and admiring the sculptures.

Steve Miller of the New York Sun noted in his news breaking obituary in 2006 [14] that the museum exhibit at the academy brought national attention to Jim Gary.

After the display became the permanent Jim Gary's Twentieth Century Dinosaurs exhibition, it traveled internationally to museums and universities; was used as sets for films, plays, and operas; was presented as exhibits for national auto shows and racing events as well as the premier international auto shows such as New York and Detroit; and was presented as landscape displays in the most elegant of botanical gardens, such as Longwood Gardens on the Pierre S. du Pont estate.

The premier research and development center for revolutionary technologies, Bell Laboratories, booked a private exhibition of fifty of Gary's sculptures in 1981 for the atrium lobby of their Holmdel facility for the benefit of its employees, as the first in a diversified art program planned to provide the enhancement of the environment and enrichment and cultural benefits for the employees and the visitors to the center.

Posters were distributed in the cities that were included in the tour and they were displayed in buses, trains, and other public places to announce the exhibition in each museum.

This exhibition was also used as the setting for significant portions of the 1986 film, Howard the Duck, a science fiction comedy produced by George Lucas.

Signature sculptures of Gary's fine art were among the works displayed in these solo shows and tours, attracting many commissions for private collections.

Many fledgling nonprofit organizations raising funds to build museums and creating parks for children held an exhibition of Jim Gary's Twentieth Century Dinosaurs by covering the expense of the complicated shipping alone, as he donated his normal fees to the cause.

Some were able to raise enough funds from fees paid by the visitors to the popular exhibits that, eventually, they could afford to purchase one of his dinosaurs in a permanent acquisition to their collection.

The last solo shows featuring the Jim Gary's Twentieth Century Dinosaurs exhibition on tour during the lifetime of the sculptor were two related ones in North Carolina in 2004.

Jim Gary is a self-taught sculptor whose works include abstracts, three-dimensional portraits, architectural, and functional pieces, as well as the celebrated collection of "Twentieth Century Dinosaurs"... [He] creates his art using the things that many of us think of as junk.

[20] In September 2009 Jim Gary's publicist and studio director, Kafi Benz, announced that negotiations were in progress for sculptures from the exhibition to be put on permanent loan at a museum.

[26][27] Three photographers were invited by Gary's studio director and publicist to document the preparations and loading of the sculptures: William Angus, Jason Meehan, and Hal Sokolow.

[31] Daws was in a similar position in 1979 at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia when he contracted with Jim Gary for his first opportunity to exhibit at a museum.

[32] Jim Gary was a popular figure for lectures about his work and was booked as a speaker by diverse groups, ranging from art and cultural associations and institutions to those focused upon automobiles, engineering, science, and trades such as welding.

[33] Gary always took the time to make appearances at schools to show children how he made his sculptures and to encourage them to pursue their own creative talents.

In 2005, Gary became too ill to manage his traditional and festive seasonal event, choosing instead to display a few works at a gallery in a nearby community.

A tribute to the sculptor was published on February 14, 2006, in the British newspaper, The Guardian, by Andrew Roth, a well known biographer and journalist whose detailed obituaries were composed for national and international figures of note.

[35] Another New York Times writer described one of Gary's works as a Diner-saurus in 1993, because when the green Stegosaurus was not traveling on exhibition, he usually displayed it at the diner he frequented.