Creative Connections

*The following is part of a series of blog posts researched and written by Mark Clardy, SRM Docent and independent scholar.* A Cowboy Chorale   From the wildflower covered plains of south Texas, the sounds and songs of the cattle trails stampeded out of the sunset, into the Soundtrack of the American West.  In the years after the Civil War, the nation, both North and South, was exhausted – and hungry.  Eastern farms and ranches that had been ravaged or raided during the war years, couldn’t provide enough cattle to satisfy the craving for beef.  But in Texas…  Ahh, the [...]

*The following is part of a series of blog posts researched and written by Mark Clardy, SRM Docent and independent scholar.* Symphony of Native America Movement 4   The Southwest   Apache Medicine Song  &  Geronimo Frederic Remington wrote about his trip to the San Carlos Apache Reservation in southeast Arizona in “On the Indian Reservations,” for the July 1889 issue of Century Magazine (Vol 38, p. 399-400).  In the article, he appears to describe the scene in Apache Medicine Song: “It grew dark, and we forbore to talk.  Presently, as though to complete the strangeness of the situation, the [...]

*The following is part of a series of blog posts researched and written by Mark Clardy, SRM Docent and independent scholar.* Symphony of Native America Movement 3 The Buffalo Hunt   Music has always been a part of Native American life, with songs and ceremonies surrounding everything of importance.  In this movement of our ongoing “Symphony of Native America,” we’ll hear the melodies and drumbeats from several Plains tribes that commemorate one of their most important events: the buffalo hunt. Lyrics in Native American songs are most often vocables (syllables without meaning), or sometimes just a few words with implied [...]

*The following is part of a series of blog posts researched and written by Mark Clardy, SRM Docent and independent scholar.* Symphony of Native America   Movement 2   Four American Indian Songs by Charles Wakefield Cadman   Searching for Sounds of the New World Charles Wakefield Cadman, Four American Indian Songs, 1909 By the close of the 19th century, the search for a distinctly “American” musical sound was well underway; but oddly, its most ardent advocate was a Bohemian.  While serving as the Director for the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York, Antonín Dvořák [...]

*The following is part of a series of blog posts researched and written by Mark Clardy, SRM Docent and independent scholar.* Listen to the paintings of Charlie Russell, Frederic Remington, and other artists of the West!  Listen carefully, and you might hear dusty cowboys serenading restless cattle, or maybe a harmonica just over the horizon.  Brush strokes pulse with the beat of Native American drums.  Staccato clouds gallop across the sunset, echoing the ochre trills of a distant flute.  Bugle calls and saloon pianos, pow-wow dances and tribal medicine songs, even las canciones de la frontera – they’re all clamoring [...]

Our current exhibit, Saddles on Parade: The Artistry of Edward Bohlin, features two saddles along with matching gear accompanied by photos and materials that tell the story of how they came into the collection and the connections to the annual Fort Worth Stock Show. For those unfamiliar with one of the most iconic saddle makers in the world, you might be wondering: who was Edward Bohlin? Edward Bohlin was born on May 12, 1895 in central Sweden just outside Örebro as Emil Helge Bohlin (when he immigrates to the U.S. he will call himself Edward H. Bohlin). As a young [...]

Every ten years the U.S. embarks on a process to calculate and record information about the population in a census. The first census of the newly-formed country was taken in 1790. One hundred years later, during the census of 1890, the government hired special agents to embark on a project that became known as the Report on Indians Taxed and Not Taxed. (“Indians not taxed” were those who were living on reservations or those roaming in unsettled areas of the country.) 1890 U.S. Census form, Public Domain SRM artist William Gilbert Gaul was one of those special agents. [...]

This year our lecture programs have taken us around the world, from exploring the influence of Buffalo Bill on the youth of 1950s Belgian Congo, to the global influences on the development of Western Horse cultures. We continue that journey with a trip across the Atlantic by exploring the reciprocal dialogues between French and US culture through interests in the American West with Dr. Emily Burns’ talk titled Mobile Arts, Fluid Ideas: The American West in France / France in the West. Interest in and representations of the American West was not exclusive to American artists like Charles Russell and [...]

Continuing exploration of our current exhibit, another studied theme centers around the Bison and the Plains Indian. One gallery wall of artworks features the chaos and movement during the actual hunt. Opposite that wall is a progression of paintings highlighting Plains Indian women and their role in relation to moving camp during hunting season created by Charles Russell from early in his career into the 1910s, representing a 20-year span of the artists treatment of this theme. Seeking New Hunting Grounds (Breaking Camp; Indian Women and Children On The Trail) | Charles M. Russell | c. 1891 | Oil [...]

Our current exhibit looks at different aspects of the American West, one theme of which explores Western Archetypes. As evidenced in his paintings and bronzes, artists like Frederic Remington created a cast of archetypal western heroes that he returned to again and again from the cowboy, to the brave solider, and the mountain men. One well-known western archetype is that of explorer, figures who carved out the trails west, with the most famous explorers of the American frontier being Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. These western heroes are represented in the exhibit with Charles Russell’s 1897 painting Captain William Clark [...]