Blog

As we prepare to reopen the museum to the public on June 7, 2021, we are pleased to present a fresh exhibit both in person and virtually! This thematic installation features works from the Sid Richardson Museum displayed to provide new contexts and renewed insights into the collection. The works are grouped around four themes: The Bison and Plains Indian Culture, Western Archetypes, Cowboys and Native Americans, and finally Twilight into Night. Installation of Picturing the American West exhibit While the collection holds a comprehensive group of works by Frederic Remington and Charles Russell, who therefore dominate this [...]

The museum made a recent discovery about an artwork from the collection as a result of one of our public programs, Tea & Talk. Designed to help us slow down the art looking experience by spending 10, 20, or even 30 minutes with one work of art. Tea & Talk engages participants through shared conversation about what we see. During a recent virtual Tea & Talk with Peter Moran’s c. 1880-81 oil painting Indian Encampment, the conversation focused on the large number of horses in the painting, leading some to speculate that the Indigenous people in the painting may have [...]

Our current exhibit, In A Different Light: Winslow Homer & Frederic Remington, explores some of the comparisons in the careers of these two iconic American artists. One of those parallels is that both Homer & Remington served as artist war correspondents: Homer in the Civil War and Remington in the Indian Wars in the Southwest and the Spanish American War in Cuba. The exposure to the realities of war made a lasting impression on both men. At the outset of the Civil War, Harper’s dispatched Homer to the frontlines in Virginia in 1861 to capture life on the battlefield. On [...]

Our current exhibit, In a Different Light: Winslow Homer & Frederic Remington, includes some artworks by Homer that focus on his seaside imagery. Homer often created scenes focusing on the forces of nature and dangers of the turbulent sea. Some artworks may include women looking anxiously out at sea, as in his 1888 etching Perils of the Sea, available to view through our virtual tour. Some artworks include scenes of near-drowned women, as in this 1887 etching The Life Line. Both prints are part of a group of etchings that Homer produced in the 1880s that closely followed his painted compositions. In The Life [...]

One of the similarities between Frederic Remington and Winslow Homer as demonstrated through our current exhibit, In a Different Light: Winslow Homer & Frederic Remington, is that both artists made their start as illustrators working for the popular magazines of the period (Harper’s Weekly, Scribner’s Monthly, etc). One of their key assignments was as war correspondents. Remington focused on the American Indian Wars in the Southwest and later the Spanish American War in Cuba. Being from an earlier generation, Homer focused on the American Civil War. In 1863, Homer partnered with Boston publisher Louis Prang (who is sometimes referred to as the “father of the American Christmas card”) in a [...]