By Janae Mancheski

It is our privilege to invite you to take a small peek at Western and Native American artwork that resides in five significant museum collections around the United States. We reached out to museum directors, presidents and curators to share with you their exciting new acquisitions, hidden gems and captivating personal favorites. No admission needed; follow us into the Booth Western Art Museum, the Briscoe Western Art Museum, the Heard Museum, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum and the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian to find works that showcase the diverse history of the Southwest.

The Booth, an affiliate to the Smithsonian Institution, has been open since 2003 and is considered to be the largest museum of its kind in the Southeastern United States. In its permanent collection are works by classic artists such as Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell and contemporary masters including Howard Terpning and Andy Warhol. Along with its permanent collection, the museum hosts 10 to 12 exhibitions a year in temporary galleries.

Executive Director Seth Hopkins shares three works in the collection.

New to the Eldridge Sculpture Court is Vic Payne’s INTO THE WILD, donated by Dr. Alfonso and Linda Mellijor, children Alejos and Crystal Villalobos and granddaughter Ashley Grace Villalobos. It is the second large-scale work by Payne to enter the collection. “[INTO THE WILD] is part of Payne’s Explorers of the West series and depicts famed explorer John C. Freemont and the legendary guide Kit Carson descending a mountain stream in a canoe,” says Hopkins.

According to Hopkins, Fritz Scholder’s INDIAN AT GALLUP BUS DEPOT is one of the most important acquisitions in the museum’s 20-year history. The work, as Hopkins explains, “depicts a Native man leaning on a gun that is part of a video game. The distorted figure wearing some Anglo clothing paired with Native jewelry is a comment on the difficulty many Natives have living in two worlds, traditional and modern. The presence of the gun hints at the conflict that can exist at the border of those two worlds. While the work was acquired 10 years ago, it has not been on view for much of that time. Many other museums around the country have asked to borrow it for major exhibitions, testifying to its importance. Recent requests for loaning the work have been denied so that Booth patrons might enjoy it for a while.”

One of Hopkins’ favorite works in the Booth Collection is the 47-by-72-inch painting PAST HISTORY, by Amy Wilmoth Watts, because in telling the history of the horse in North America it “is covered with history, details, clues and hidden elements that could keep you looking for days.” Hopkins adds, “From arriving with the Conquistadors, through adoption by Native Americans, use during the Civil War and on to modern times, this is a 500-year history lesson. Despite having an art degree, the artist spent 20 years training horses before pursuing her art as a career. Although she has plenty of horse anatomy in her mind, she chooses to paint her horses in a stylized manner rather than photorealistic.”

In 2013 the Briscoe Western Art Museum opened on the San Antonio River Walk in the restored former San Antonio Public Library building from the 1930s. The museum, dedicated to preserving and presenting the art, history and culture of the American West, is named for late Texas Gov. Dolph Briscoe Jr. and his wife, Janey Slaughter Briscoe. It is a 1.5-acre campus that includes the three-story Jack Guenther Pavilion and the outdoor McNutt Sculpture Garden.

President and CEO Liz Jackson shares three works in the collection.

This work by Kim Wiggins received the Night of Artists 2022 Museum Art Purchase Award to join the permanent collection. “With a background in marketing and a love for design, I was immediately drawn to this piece for its rich color and storytelling. Every aspect draws you in and the more you gaze at it, the more surprising delights you discover. I knew it would resonate with others as much as it did with me,” says Jackson. “We used the image to draw attention to our annual Night of Artists exhibition and sale and it’s been a favorite since it joined our collection. It’s a joy to hear children react to this painting when they visit the Briscoe and Kim’s whimsical clouds and use of color bring out the child in us all.”

“What I treasure most about this work of art is that at first glance, the viewer notices only the young couple in love dancing, but as the painting draws you in, you realize that everyone pictured is also watching the dancers. There is so much diversity in this painting that gives insight, albeit idyllic, into the hacienda lifestyles, conformed social structures, and complex relationships between the hacienda owners and workers,” says Jackson. “There are two card players, one might be a farmer due to his bare feet, and perhaps an older woman is a grandmotherly chaperone or the prosperous gentleman with his gold watch chain and a cigar. This painting is mysterious as we have yet to confirm the artist. However, there is some evidence the work could have been done by costumbrista artists such as Arrieta, Hesiquio Iriarte or Casimiro Castro.” On view in the Guerra Gallery, this work was purchased with funds provided by the Jack and Valerie Guenther Foundation.

“When I first arrived at the Briscoe for my interview in 2016, I joined the countless River Walk tourists who stop and are amazed at this monumental outdoor work of art. I later learned this location along the San Antonio River was where numerous cattle drives stopped to rest and water the livestock, so the location of this work is a nod to that Western history,” says Jackson. “Kelsey captures the utter strength of the cattle and the vaquero’s tenacity in wrangling his herd. Set at the river’s base, the herd rises from the water just as one might have expected. I pass this sculpture every day as I walk into the museum, taking pleasure in hearing young children, visitors and tourists wonder with awe and imagine what it would have been like to have lived during the time of the great cattle drives.”

Since its founding in 1939, the Heard Museum has grown in both size and stature to international recognition for the quality of its collections, world-class exhibitions, educational programing and festivals. The Heard, dedicated to the advancement of Native American art, draws from a collection of more than 45,000 works to present the stories of Indigenous peoples from a first-person perspective. The museum also hosts exhibitions of traditional and contemporary art.

Chief Curator Diana Pardue shares three works in the collection.

In December 2022, the Heard received a donation of 23 contemporary Plains beaded dolls, or soft sculptures, from Charles and Valerie Diker, including this work by Jamie Okuma. Pardue says, “Each work in this remarkable collection is impeccably detailed with vintage micro-beads and may include additions of miniature coins, brass rings or shells. The artists have spent decades learning about 19th-century regalia to assure accuracy in their depictions of apparel and accoutrements, with some works referencing specific historical figures. Averaging 20 to 22 inches in height—with two works on horseback reaching 31 inches—each sculpture illustrates the unique abilities of the artist.”

During the museum’s formative years, Dwight and Maie Heard purchased pottery jars from San Ildefonso Pueblo artists Maria and Julian Martinez including a tall jar with abstract designs that is in the museum’s permanent exhibition Home. Around the same time, they bought a blackware jar by Maria that is “reminiscent of the low-shoulder pottery jars” made by Nampeyo that hasn’t been exhibited in 40 years. Pardue says, “The jar’s exquisite shape, luster and clean lines make it perfect for inclusion in the Heard’s upcoming exhibition Maria & Modernism, opening in February 2024.”

“When Yazzie Johnson and Gail Bird plan and design their signature necklaces, the result is a clear vision of color, form and design, along with an occasional glimpse of whimsy. A necklace made in 2000 and recently donated to the Heard by Robin Chemers Neustein exhibits all of these characteristics,” Pardue says. The single-strand necklace features large South Sea pearls with 11 bezel-set aquamarine stones, and as in other necklaces it has designs on the reverse overlay. She continues, “The artists chose a butterfly for the reverse of the central pendant, one of the clasps and the smaller satellites, and they chose dragonflies for others. These design elements accentuate the beauty of the necklace.”

Yazzie Johnson (Navajo) and Gail Bird (Santo Domingo Pueblo/Laguna Pueblo), Untitled, 2000, pearl, aquamarine, 18k gold, 21.

Chester A. Reynolds’ intention to establish a “Cowboy Hall of Fame,” a memorial to the “builders of the West,” became today’s National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. In its collections are James Earle Fraser and Laura Gardin Fraser sculptures, works by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell, and the Silberman Collection of Native American 2D art. The Museum has recently focused on exhibiting works from Hispano, African American, Native American and female artists.

McCasland Chair of Cowboy Culture/Curator of Cowboy Collections & Western Art Michael R. Grauer shares three works in the collection.

This is one of the first art objects by a Hispano artist acquired by the museum, Grauer says, in its effort “to tell the broader story of Spain, Mexico and the Hispanic Southwest’s tremendous influence on the American West.” In 2022 Luis Tapia said the work takes him back to grade school in 1950s Santa Fe when he won an art contest for drawing a Santa Fe Rodeo poster. He won tickets to the rodeo, which began with a parade for the rodeo king and queen. He said, “I thought these royal riders were so glamorous, with flowery cowgirl shirts, big and shiny belt buckles, and fancy cowgirl boots and hats with crowns in place of hatbands. Those images inspired this piece over a half-century later, a testament to the enduring power of small-town memories even as the place where I grew up continues to change.”

A year after being elected to the National Sculpture Society in 1903, Solon Hannibal Borglum received a commission of four monumental groups in plaster staff for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. This included COWBOY AT REST, an autobiographical work that is “a direct counterpoint to popular images of the cowboy, as Borglum later wrote: ‘Perhaps the most misrepresented of all the western types is the cowboy. The people of the East have been led by ignorant or careless writers, painters and sculptors to confuse him with the cattle ‘rustler’ or raider. He has been pictured as a desperado, going about ‘shooting up’ towns and leaving a trail of carnage behind.’” The maquettes for the works were in his first solo exhibition at Keppel & Co. in New York. In 2020, after not having been on view in approximately 30 years, the sculpture was installed in the museum’s Atherton Galleries.

When Grauer arrived at the museum in September 2018 he “made a promise to the staff and board to ‘cowboy the hell out of this place.’” He says this Dunton vaquero painting is the perfect example of his work for the museum because it helps its efforts “to tell the true cowboy origin story from Africa to Spain to Mexico to Texas to California and the rest of the U.S.” Grauer, who has been researching Dunton since 1989 and is working on a catalogue raisonné for the artist, says the museum had many outstanding works from the Taos art colony collection, but the “cowboy artist of Taos” was not represented.

Founded in 1937, the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian was “created in the spirit of collaboration and mutual respect between Mary Cabot Wheelwright (1878-1958), of Boston, and Hastiin Klah (1867-1937), an esteemed Diné ceremonial practitioner and weaver. It was originally established as the Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art, but the museum changed its purpose and name in the 1970s to historic and contemporary Native American art and in the 1990s to focus on Navajo and Pueblo jewelry.

Executive Director Dr. Henrietta Lidchi shares three works in the collection.

“The Wheelwright has benefited since its beginning from the generosity of collectors, and in recent years we have received substantial legacies from those we have treasured as long-term friends and patrons. Jewelry is such an intimate expression of taste. To see pieces that you know were worn with pride and pleasure in a glass case is a bittersweet experience. Nevertheless, there is joy in knowing that this phenomenal bracelet with coral and Lone Mountain turquoise made in 1976 by the Navajo master jeweler Kenneth Begay (1913-1977) is now in the collection,” Lidchi notes. “To fully appreciate it, you have to spend a little time looking at it. Doing that you realize that it curves in three different directions, while creating the optical illusion of straight lines. Its beauty lies in Begay’s pared down aesthetics and control over the material. Because the collector, Ruth Schultz (1923-2019), kept detailed records, we know she acquired it 10 years after Begay’s death, and because it was too big, asked Begay’s son, Harvey Begay (1939-2009), to modify it.” The bracelet is on view in the exhibit Always in Relation: Artworks from the Schultz Collection through October 21.

In 2023, the Wheelwright opened California Stars/Huivanius Pütsiv, an exhibition focusing on First Californian artists that is on view through January 14. “It speaks to way in which the museum fostered and shows established and emerging artists, and how these individuals were connected with each other,” Lidchi explains. “Fonseca was an obvious person to include given the influence of his work and his presence in the community. He was a friend to the Museum, and we held early solo shows In Search of Coyote: The Paintings and Works on Paper of Harry Fonseca (1983) and Earth, Wind and Fire, Harry Fonseca (1996). What we did not know was how many works the Museum held.” When inventoried, the museum found a collection of 70 sketches, finished drawings and paintings.

In 1995 the Wheelwright acquired the archives of anthropologist John Adair (1913-1997), and this print was one of the items included. “Adair’s work in the 1930s and 1940s is well known, being published in The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths, a reference work never out of print since its original publication in 1944. In the 1970s Adair was asked to reprise his research in part due to impact of the ‘jewelry boom’ and he caught jewelers in their youth who subsequently rose to prominence. Adair was an avid photographer and had a capacity to take candid shots of those he knew well, and he took two of Lee,” states Lidchi. “In one Lee is slightly more formally posed with his sunglasses reflecting the photographer. This one shows the generosity of his character and the ebullience of his laugh. I was lucky enough to get to know Lee a little in the 1990s and the fact that the Museum has these images caught at a moment in time, brings home the power of photography and the necessity of collecting stories and memories as we collect artworks.”

This story appeared in the October/November 2023 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Subscribe today to read every issue in its entirety.

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