The bronze stands where the queen herself once held court over the valley, or as close as art can come. On the evening of September 9, 2026, at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming, the world will meet Grizzly 399 once more, this time in metal instead of flesh. The unveiling and dedication of "Against All Odds," a heroic bronze of the bear known as the Queen of the Tetons and her celebrated 2020 litter of quadruplet cubs, will offer a lasting tribute to one of the most beloved grizzly bears in history.
The date was chosen with intention: 9/9, a quiet wink at the number 399 that made her famous. It also opens that year's Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival, and the museum is making the free event a full celebration with remarks, an artist meet-and-greet, and a public presentation in its auditorium. Renowned photographer Thomas D. Mangelsen will offer remarks before joining sculptor Jocelyn Russell for a question-and-answer session on the piece's creation. Complimentary food and beverages will be shared between 5 and 6 p.m.
The sculpture itself is the work of Russell, a wildlife artist with more than sixty public monuments to her name, including the heroic Secretariat and a monument to the indefatigable Marine Corps horse Sgt. Reckless. With sculpting team members Kristen Douglas-Seitz and Colleen Moore, Russell created the monument, which depicts 399 with her four cubs. The finished monument, roughly one and a half times life-size, was cast in bronze at Adonis Bronze Foundry in Utah and will stand on the museum's Sculpture Trail near the front entrance, to the right of the porte-cochère.
That a bear should occupy a place of such prestige is a measure of how far 399 traveled in the public imagination. She lived to 28 years, birthed 18 cubs, and was one of the oldest known grizzly bears to keep reproducing in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. She was frequently seen near the roads and pullouts of Grand Teton National Park, drawing crowds of admirers. Tourists wept at the sight of her, and an Instagram account devoted to her amassed a large following.
Her greatest celebrity arrived in 2020, when she emerged from her den with a rare litter of quadruplet cubs. The 'quads,' as they were called, turned her into an international sensation and the subject of a PBS documentary that crowned her 'Queen of the Tetons.'
It was the quads that Russell chose to immortalize, the version of 399 the world remembers most fondly. Their own story, though, echoes the hard truths of wild life. Roughly half of all of 399's descendants are believed to have perished, most of them because of human activity. In that sense, the new monument is not only a celebration but a reckoning, a bronze meditation on a species that persists in the margins between wilderness and pavement.
That fragile balance was never more starkly illustrated than in the way 399 herself died. On October 22, 2024, she was struck by a vehicle in the Snake River Canyon south of Jackson.
The effort to create one sprang from the non-profit Angels Without Wings and its Grizzly 399 Legacy of Love Project. The project invited the public to place their names not only on a donor plaque but, for those willing to give $399 or more, inside a hermetically sealed stainless steel container set permanently within the monument's heart space, the so-called Queen's Heart Initiative, while lower-level donors could contribute photos and notes to an archival box housed in the museum.
The sculpture is being donated to the museum, and it will take its place on the museum's Sculpture Trail. 'This sculpture illustrates just how great of an impact a single animal can have,' said Chief Curator of Art Dr. Kennis Forte.
So on September 9, when the cloth falls and the bronze catches the mountain light, Grizzly 399 will remain exactly as most people remember her: a mother with her four cubs around her. In the end, a bear who taught the world how to coexist with the wild now stands at the entrance of a museum devoted to celebrating it, an old queen at last given a permanent throne.