LOS ANGELES – On the occasion of its 25th anniversary, the Autry National Center presents Art of the West, an elegant installation of more than 100 works of art that explores the meaning of Western art as it has evolved among diverse peoples and across generations. Drawing on the Autry and Southwest Museum of the American Indian collections, Art of the West surveys the shared values and interests that have inspired artists from different cultures and times.

Historical works by masters such as Thomas Moran and Frederic Remington are seen alongside modern and contemporary pieces by the likes of Virgil Ortiz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Luis Tapia, David Levinthal, and many others. These distinctive, powerful works speak to their creators’ experience of the West as a destination, a community, and a home. Art of the West opens to the public on June 15, 2013.

“With Art of the West, we have an extraordinary opportunity to reach across art historical boundaries to discover what connects artists of different generations and origins,” says W. Richard West, Jr., President and CEO, Autry National Center. “Setting disparate works side-by-side yields striking juxtapositions that illuminate cross-cultural parallels, influences, and distinctions. It is a fresh, visual retelling of the story that enriches the entire narrative of the American West and strikes a new path for interpreting our rich collections.”

Art of the West inaugurates the Autry’s new Irene Helen Jones Parks Gallery of Art and constitutes the first major renovation of a permanent gallery since the museum opened in 1988. This stunning new gallery marks the debut of an ongoing process of transformation for all of the museum’s core galleries. With the opening of the Parks Gallery, the Autry is able to showcase works both beautiful and surprising, including rarely seen pieces from the Southwest Museum Collection. A smaller “jewel box” space within the gallery is designed for intimate viewing. Debuting in this space is Yosemite After Adams, a mini-exhibition of photographs.

Art of the West is thematically organized, investigating Western art through the lenses of Religion and Ritual, Land and Landscape, and Migration and Movement. The exhibition freely mingles art forms, genres, eras, and media. Functional objects are seen alongside painting and sculpture. Art of the West features outstanding examples of leatherwork, basketry, textiles, ceramics, glass, metalwork, wood, jewelry, video, and more. Artworks are as varied as a Hmong quilt, a fourteen-foot-tall crucifix, a Victorian velvet dress, and a motorcycle. Works by Native peoples from California, the Northwest Coast, the Southwest, and Great Plains are shown alongside those by Spanish colonial artists, Romantic-era painters, modernists, and contemporary artists of various backgrounds and experiences.

Religion and Ritual

Over the centuries, religious beliefs and rituals have played a major role in shaping artistic practice across the West. From the devotional art of New Spain to the Native dance rituals of the Southwest and the graphic symbolism of Northwest Coast mythology, art in the West is rich with religious and spiritual meaning.

Highlights of this section include a glass sculpture by Northwest Coast artist Preston Singletary and a pair of ten-foot, historic house posts carved with animals and spirit beings. European visitors’ fascination with Southwest rituals is seen in paintings by Jan Matulka (Indian Dancers With Masks, 1918) and Frank Applegate (Hopi Snake Dance, 1923). Contemporary artists reinterpret traditional religious forms, as in José Benjamín Lopez’s carved wood Cristo (circa 1980), a towering crucifixion figure, and Paul Pletka’s painting Tears of the Lord (2005), which depicts Christ nailed to an Aztec cross and attended by figures in both Western and Indigenous dress. Spanish Colonial Carrito (1994), a carved wood “lowrider” by Luis Tapia, is decorated with a blend of popular and religious imagery.

Land and Landscape

This gallery includes a range of landscapes, defined here as the artistic use and representation of land. In Native societies of the Southwest, local clays, grasses, wools, and dyes have long been used to make objects that are functional expressions of individual artistry. Traditional master ceramics from the Zuni, San Ildefonso, and Santa Clara pueblos are featured, as well as a contemporary interpretation of his family’s tradition by Cochiti Pueblo artist Virgil Ortiz. Carrie Bethel’s elaborate basket, circa 1930, not only reflects Native traditions but also reveals the impact of “field day” competitions generated by Yosemite Valley tourism.

In traditional Euro-American art, the land is not used directly; rather, it is represented from afar as a visual object to behold. In his large-scale painting Bridges (1989), James Doolin adapts European landscape techniques to a picture of a freeway interchange. Varying perspectives produce widely different landscape views, as seen in Gus Foster’s panoramic photograph Mt. Dana (1990), the aerial effect of Harold Gregor’s painting Illinois Flatscape #61 (1997), and See Lee’s untitled Hmong quilt (1980), which narrates her people’s refugee story in a condensed foreground space.

Victorian America, the idea of wilderness—land untouched by human industry—was a powerful, romantic idea that influenced painting, decorative arts, and even fashion. Art of the West features such fanciful creations as bison chairs carved in 1842 for Scottish adventurer William Drummond Stewart and an 1896 silver Tiffany punch bowl adorned with figures of Indians. This status symbol is seen alongside a mid-1880s Sioux bear claw necklace, which similarly indicates its wearer’s prestige. In the manner of the time, a wall of 19 nineteenth-century landscape paintings is installed “salon style” in the California Historical Society Gallery within the Parks Gallery. Among the many highlights here are Thomas Moran’s Mountain of the Holy Cross (1875), John Mix Stanley’s Young Chief Uncas (circa 1862), and Albert Bierstadt’s On the Merced River (circa 1865), one of several works on long-term loan from the renowned California Historical Society Collection.

Migration and Movement

From the nomadic tribes of the Great Plains to the railroads, cattle empires, and modern freeway system, the West is associated with travel and movement, often at high speeds. This gallery consists of artworks, objects, and images that convey a sense of movement, were designed to move, or represent those whose movements have changed the West.

This section of the exhibition is introduced by contrasting David Levinthal’s Wild West (1987–1989), a series of Polaroid pictures of plastic toy cowboys, with an elaborately beaded Crow Indian woman’s saddle (circa 1900). By evoking his childhood and the fantasy of movie Westerns, Levinthal blurs the distinction between reality and fiction. The saddle bespeaks of not only the wealth and freedom that horses represented to the Great Plains tribes but also the influence of Spanish riding practices.

Motorized power and freedom are represented by a gleaming Indian Chief Roadmaster motorcycle (1948). A one-time rival to Harley-Davidson, the company chose the name Indian to suggest a spirit of independence and pride. This handsome model is decorated with custom-fringed leatherwork and an Indian bust fender ornament.

Yosemite After Adams

This jewel box gallery showcases a selection of contemporary photographs acquired by the Autry during the 2006 exhibition Yosemite: Art of An American Icon. As seen in the Land and Landscape section of the exhibition, Yosemite’s beauty and drama made the valley a popular subject for nineteenth-century painters. By the latter part of the century, photographers followed suit. Ansel Adams (1902–1984) made his reputation documenting the park with poetic precision. To supplant Adams’s influence, contemporary photographers had to invent new ways of interpreting the valley. In Yosemite After Adams, photographers such as Richard Misrach, Bruce Davidson, and John Divola frame new views of the park, from its crowded parking lots to a glimpse of Half Dome obscured by blackened trees.

Loretta and Victor Kaufman Gift

In 2012, Loretta and Victor Kaufman gifted the Autry nearly fifty works from their extraordinary collection. In celebration of this gift, fifteen works of art, including paintings by Taos Society of Artists founders Joseph Henry Sharp and Eanger Irving Couse; sculpture by iconic Western artists Frederic Remington and Allan Houser; and contemporary works by Roy Anderson and Kenneth Riley, will be on view in the Parks Gallery. These works will inaugurate a 500-square-foot space dedicated to rotating exhibitions focused on special or recent acquisitions, contemporary work from the Autry collections, and collaborations with living artists.

“The Kaufman gift is a unique combination of the historical and the contemporary,” said Amy Scott, the Autry’s Marilyn B. and Calvin B. Gross Curator of Visual Arts. “It greatly enhances the Autry’s ability to display and interpret the role of art in the twentieth-century West, from historic Northern New Mexico artists to those working across the West today.”

Related Programming

The Autry will present a range of programs in association with the exhibition during its inaugural year. On the exhibition’s opening day, Saturday, June 15, Virgil Ortiz, whose work is on view in the exhibition, will give an artist’s talk introducing his new fashion line and most recent pottery innovations;  visitors can also enjoy the annual Navajo Rug Auction. On July 13, master basketweaver Rachel Hess (Miwok and Paiute) leads a cradleboard-making workshop. La Cena Salon Series: The Urban Landscape, a salon-style evening with Latino artists, is scheduled for September 18. Lectures, family programs, and other tours and talks will be announced.

This exhibition and its related programs are sponsored by James R. Parks, with support from the Automobile Club of Southern California.

About the Autry National Center

The Autry is a museum dedicated to exploring and sharing the stories, experiences, and perceptions of the diverse peoples of the American West, connecting the past to the present to inspire our shared future. The museum presents a wide range of exhibitions and public programs, including lectures, film, theater, festivals, family events, and music, and performs scholarship, research, and educational outreach. The Autry’s collection of more than 500,000 pieces of art and artifacts includes the Southwest Museum of the American Indian Collection, one of the largest and most significant in the United States.

HOURS

Museum and Autry Store: Tuesday–Friday, 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. / Saturday and Sunday, 11:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Autry Cafe: Tuesday–Sunday, 9:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

The museum, store, and cafe are closed on Mondays.