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During his residence in Montana, Charles Russell encountered Indigenous people, both on the northern plains of the state and from neighboring tribes in Alberta, Canada. He lived in the area where Plains Indian Sign Language (PISL), also known as Hand Talk among the Native community, was an important communication system among the Plains tribal members. Due to his relationships with many members of nearby Indigenous tribes, Russell learned signs of PISL and incorporated them into some of his paintings.   Mapping of North American Indian Sign Language     Outline of corresponding tribes with various regional variations [...]

Our current exhibit, Charles M. Russell: Storyteller Across Media, focuses on all the different art forms through which the artist communicated a story in his work. One of the common narratives in Russell’s art is that of the relationship between Indigenous people of the Great Plains and the American bison. (Note: while bison is the scientific name, buffalo is the more familiar term used today.)   Charles M. Russell | Wounded (The Wounded Buffalo) | 1909 | Oil on canvas | 19.975 x 30.125 inches   What does that relationship look like today? A great example is taking [...]

Every cowboy hat has a story to tell. When you walk through our galleries here at the Sid Richardson Museum, you’ll not have to journey far before you encounter an artwork featuring a figure in a Western-style hat. But not each hat is the same. Every cowboy hat carries the history of its wearer, whether that be Mexican vaquero hats, Charro hats, the hats of western performers or rodeo stars, and of course the working cowboy hats. So let’s take a journey through some highlights from our collection to explore the evolution and different iterations of the cowboy hat.   [...]

The impact of Charles Russell’s friendship with pioneer dude rancher Howard Eaton appears twice in our current exhibit, Charles M. Russell: Storyteller Across Media. The first occurrence is in Russell’s 1916 oil painting Man’s Weapons Are Useless When Nature Goes Armed. In the bottom left corner viewers will see an inscription to Eaton from his friend CMR.   Charles M. Russell | Man's Weapons Are Useless When Nature Goes Armed (Weapons of the Weak; Two of a Kind Win) | 1916 | Oil on canvas | 30 x 48.125 inches   Detail of Man's Weapons showing Russell's [...]

What do we see when we picture the American West? Perhaps Native women, elderly Indigenous men, or Anglo cowboys. Commonly imagined through art and film, these have been the consistent images of the American West that are still accepted to this day and that, until recently, very few people have questioned. This imagined West was very real for generations of people and remains the way that, for many people, we picture this place. Another way the “Old West” is imagined and imaged is through erasure; a time and place that is supported by those we do not see. In a [...]

“Few who would acquire a knowledge of the heavens, let him give up his days and nights to the marvels of Orion.” - Charles Edward Barns, a writer and hobby astronomer of the late 19th century   Frederic Remington completed over 70 compositions of night scenes from 1900 until his death in 1909. The artist referred to these paintings as his moonlights, and today we refer to them as nocturnes. The Sid Richardson Museum has 5 nocturnes in its collection. Our current show, Night & Day: Frederic Remington’s Final Decade, features 10 of Remington’s night paintings. Nocturnal images were crucial [...]