The Black West Exhibitions

On January 16, we had the great honor of having co-curator of The Black West: Buffalo Soldiers, Black Cowboys, and Untold Stories, “Cowboy” Mike Searles, come in and tour Museum staff, volunteers, and docents through the exhibit and talk about its many paintings and sculpture. There are so many wonderful, unheard stories told in each work of art about the roles and contributions of Blacks in the West that “Cowboy Mike” brings to life. Stories of Stage Coach Mary, Bill Pickett and Lieutenant Flipper are just a few mentioned in The Black West exhibit.

Bernard Williams is one of the 16 artists featured in The Black West exhibit. As you enter the exhibit his first painting, “African Cowboy” located on the left wall, illustrates the corruption of tradition of the W. African “herdsmen” to the American cow “boy”. The Figures in the painting symbolize the settlement of America and the role of African culture in its language.

Please come and experience The Black West for yourself - you are guaranteed to learn something new and fascinating! The exhibit will be here until March 22, 2009, so hurry!

Cowboy Festival & Symposium Schedule

It's almost here. And it looks like the weather will be good for the weekend although on Friday the vendors will have a hard time setting up in the rain. Maybe it won't be so bad though.

If you haven't had a chance to visit our website yet for the schedule events, it's all right here with links to other pages for more information. Hope to see you at the Cowboy Festival & Symposium this weekend!

Festival & Symposium Schedule
Events and times subject to change, check our website for updates

Thursday, October 23
5:00 - 7:00 pm: Doc Stovall and the Tumbleweed Cowboy Band will perform in the Museum Atrium.

5:00 – 7:00 pm: Meet the Artists Reception in the Borderlands and Theatre Lobby Galleries. View the exhibits Dust and Pearls: Showing Attitude in Cowboys and Cowgirls by David DeVary, Drawing on a Legacy: Recent Works by Cherokee Artist Tony Weldon, meet the artists. Then, at 7:00 pm. Join Cowboy Festival & Symposium featured artist David DeVary in the Booth Theatre for a presentation.

7:00 pm: Featured Artist Presentation: David DeVary, from Santa Fe, New Mexico, will present a lecture on his artistic style and career highlights in the Booth Theatre. DeVary will be available to sign copies of the official Festival & Symposium poster in the Museum Store following the lecture.

Friday, October 24
9:00 am - 4:00 pm: Artist’s Workshop with David DeVary, Featured Artist for the Festival and Symposium. Cost is $100 for members and $150 for non-members; limited class size; call 770-607-3686 for reservations.

10:30 am - 4:00 pm: Art History Lectures in the Booth Theatre. Join top scholars as they present their research on a variety of Western art topics in the Booth Theatre.

5:00 – 8:00 pm: Meet the Collector Reception in the Borderlands Gallery. View Weaving a Trail Back Home: Cherokee Basketry from the Eastern Band and meet collector Lambert Wilson in the Borderlands Gallery.

7:00 pm: Western Concert in the Grand Theatre featuring Kip Calahan, Doc Stovall and the Tumbleweed Cowboy Band, and Tom Kerlin. A CD signing will follow in the Encore Room adjacent to the Theatre.

Saturday, Octobers 25
9:00 am – 5:00 pm: Cowboy Festival, Children’s Activities and Western Marketplace on the grounds of the Museum. Sample the wares of vendors ranging from Western art to collectibles. Enjoy entertainment throughout the day on two stages, including Western music, fast draw competitions, three performances of the Re-enactment of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and demonstrations of traditional Indian dances by the Big Mountain Family. Plus, living history encampments with demonstrations of pioneer skills from bygone days. For a complete list of vendors and demonstrators, click here.

2:00 and 7:00 pm: Wylie and The Wild West Concerts in the Grand Theatre. The music of Wylie & The Wild West is a beacon of truth and honest beauty. Singer, songwriter, rancher, horseman, and the original, world-famous Yahoo® yodeler, Wylie Gustafson leads the musical outfit known as The Wild West. Join them for a family matinee at 2:00 pm or the evening show at 7:00 pm

Sunday, October 26
11:00 am: Cowboy Church. A non-denominational service featuring cowboy prayers and Western spiritual music.

Noon to 5:00 pm: Cowboy Festival, Children’s Activities, and Western Marketplace on the grounds of the Museum.

One Week to go

In one week our annual Cowboy Festival & Symposium will be underway. We're all busy with last minute preparations and looking forward to the weekend. It's always a mix of fun and excitement and it wears us all out. Sometime the anticipation alone is enough to wear us out. The Western town is up, the bleachers are in place, temporary fencing to mark off areas is ready to be used, the advertising is running, the speakers and entertainers are confirmed. Now all we need are the visitors. Stayed tuned next for details on the weekend.

Artist Profile - William Ahrendt

This museum is fortunate to have some fantastic artists represented in the collection. The unfortunate thing is that sometimes some artists tend to get more recognition than others. Over the coming months, this blog will attempt to highlight some of the artists in the collection which you may not typically hear a lot about at the museum.

This week's feature is on William Ahrendt. Ahrendt was born in Cleveland, OH in 1933. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from the Cleveland Institute of Art and a Masters degree in Art History from Arizona State University. Early on in his career, Ahrendt had the good fortune of spending 11 years in Europe, mostly in Germany on a European Study Scholarship from the Cleveland Institute of Art. During his time in Germany, he attended the Munich Academy of Creative Art where he studied painting techniques of the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

Ahrendt returned to the United States in 1968 and settled in Arizona, where he still resides. He became the Art Department Chairperson at Glenndale Community College. He held this job until 1979 when he retired so he could focus more on his fine art career. Over the years, Ahrendt has been a contributing editor to "Arizona Highways" - a magazine devoted to travelogues and artistic photographs of Arizona. His paintings and articles have been published in over 40 issues of the magazine.

Ahrendt loves history, which is relfected in his artwork. He is known for painting the "Old West" in an "Old World" style. In "The Bullwhackers" at the Booth Museum, Ahrendt portrays 3 cowboys driving a team of oxen across a river. The oxen are pulling a rather large covered wagon. In the background, a rainbow is visible a amidst a dark sky and rain. While most people tend to think of horses pulling wagons, it was not unusual for oxen to be used for very heavy loads. They may have been slower than horses, but the oxen were much stronger. The "Bull Whackers" are the cowboys. They are cracking whips above the oxen to encourga them to keep moving through the water - they did not use the whips to hit the animals.

See Mark Twain at the Booth Museum

Thursday evening, August 21, Mark Twain will pay a visit the Booth Museum. No, not the real Mark Twain - he died 98 years ago (at the age 75). The multi-talented Jim Dunham will bring this remarkable American icon to life before your very eyes. This is isn't a seance to channel the dead, although Twain probably would have loved that, but instead Dunham will present an hour long performance on Mark Twain, by Mark Twain. You read correctly - "by Mark Twain." Dunham has compiled excerpts from a number of Twain's writings that chronicle his life and the times he lived in. Dress in a white suite, the standard attire of Twain in many of photographs, Dunham will take on the persona of Mark Twain and present this unique first person narrative, thus becoming Mark Twain for one hour and one hour only. It's something you really don't want to miss.

So maybe you're sitting there reading this blog entry and thinking "I remember a little about Mark Twain from school, but I really don't know much about him. What's so special about Mark Twain?" Well, you are in luck. Here is a brief (very brief) biography of Mark Twain.

Mark Twain, known as an American humorist and satirist, was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835 in Missouri. He was the 6th of 7 seven children although only 4 of the children survived to adulthood. During his lifetime, Twain worked as typesetter at a printer in Missouri; as a printer in New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati; a steamboat pilot; a coal miner; and writer for numerous newspapers. He married in 1870 and he and his wife had 4 children - 1 boy which died and 3 girls. Twain is best know for writing "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," which was based on his childhood in Missouri, and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Twain's writing differed from other authors because the characters in his writings talked like the average American talked - with dialects and regional accents. His writing was also highly influenced by journalism as he wrote for newspapers for much of his life.

If you want to learn more about Mark Twain, there are a couple of places you may want to check out online: The Mark Twain House and The Official Website of Mark Twain. And of course, you could always read his books.

Sweet Tea II Opens

Last night we have yet another fantastic exhibition opening for our members. We held the opening reception for three exhibitions - Western American Art South of the Sweet Tea Line II, Hidden Heritage: Western Art from an Atlanta Collection, and Neo-abOriginal Art: The Sculptural Marvels of Ed Archie NoiseCat. All three exhibitions are great - each is unique in its own right, however Western American South of the Sweet Tea Line II (or "Sweet Tea II" as the museum staff calls it) absolutely stole the show. Our executive director Seth Hopkins co-curated the show with our curator Jeff Donaldson. "Sweet Tea II" features over 70 peices of art spanning about 150 years. All the artwork came from collectors within 6 southern states. Some of the lenders are private individuals and others are are museums. Many of these works have never been exhibited to the public before. When you first walk into the gallery, landscapes with almost take your breath away. Each peice in the exhibition has a unique and interesting story, but one of particular interest is a piece that was owned by Lyndon B. Johnson. Apparently he loved the scene in the painting because it reminded him of his ranch and gave it a place of honor above his bed in the White House. Johnson commissioned the artist the do a portrait but apparently it did not turn out well. Johnson thought it was the worst portrait of him he had seen and it led to an argument with the artist. Johnson then sold the painting of the ranch scene.

Neo-abOriginal Art...

Neo-abOriginal Art on display in Borderlands Gallery

There are some interesting sculptures and carvings by Ed Archie NoiseCat now on display through September 21, 2008 in the Borderlands Gallery at the Booth Western Art Museum. Neo-abOriginal Art is NoiseCat’s way of terming his impressive artwork of the Northwestern Coast Native American culture. This exhibition contains pieces of artwork of all sizes and sentiments. Ed Archie NoiseCat was born and raised in British Columbia and grew up under the influence of the stories and art forms of the Native Americans of the Northwest Pacific Coast. NoiseCat was formally trained in New York, has worked in Oklahoma and New Mexico and has been featured in Southwest Art Magazine. NoiseCat states on his website, http://www.noisecat.com/:

We are the stewards of these lands. We are responsible to generations past and
generations yet to come. I am working to communicate aboriginal values and honor
our ancestors with my art.

NoiseCat’s artwork shows the traditional richness of his people while also reflecting modern uniqueness and originality. This collection is very eclectic and offers a good opportunity to break out of the ordinary and view creative artwork. The curator for this exhibition will be present August 16th, at 5:00 pm in the Borderlands Gallery to further discuss this intriguing exhibition. Come view these sculptural marvels of Ed Archie NoiseCat and learn more about the artist behind them!

Borderlands Gallery