With previews of gallery exhibitions, museum shows and auctions, Western Art Collector is the premier monthly magazine for collectors searching for works by talented living and past artists who depict the West in paintings and sculptures.
One of the first major events of the year is the LA Art Show. The fair, which happens typically over the second or third weekend of January, is a staple of the art world on the West Coast and brings over 80 contemporary and traditional art dealers to the Los Angeles Convention Center each year. This year, the show broke an attendance record by bringing in nearly 70,000 people to the three-day event. That is 70,000 people coming to look at art in downtown Los Angeles on January days with the thermometer nearing 80. But people didn’t just show up. They bought. Several galleries I spoke with told me that the show this year was the best they have ever done sales wise. And it’s not just from the LA…
DIRECTOR OF PALACE JEWELERS Tsali Hal Manitou Galleries Santa Fe, NM Native American and Western jewelry continues to be highly collected and sought after. We are seeing increasing interest and find that our clients are much more educated about artists, fabrication and stone quality than ever before. We’re happy to see that today’s collectors are asking more in-depth and well-informed questions about materials, dates and provenance than in the past. We’re happy to see that today’s collectors are asking more in-depth and well informed questions about materials, dates and provenance than in the past. In the contemporary Native jewelry market, clients are seeking up-and-coming artists. Many collectors have followed their favorite artists throughout the years and have bought from them. They are now looking for jewelers who have been mentored…
After several years in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas, Brian Lebel’s Old West Events is moving its annual summer sale to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Lebel’s 29th annual Cody Old West Show & Auction will land in Santa Fe June 23 and 24. The show, which will feature a two-day dealer show with dozens of vendors and a live auction, will bring a variety of Western materials, with an emphasis on cowboy art and artifacts, into Santa Fe. The city has long been associated with Native American art and culture, which will have a presence at the show, but the show will mostly focus on the American cowboy, a cultural figure that also has deep roots in the historic city. “The show will be held on the same weekend…
Opening February 24 at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, Nevada, is Hans Meyer-Kassel: Artist of Nevada, a new exhibition that will examine the work of one of Nevada’s most famous painters. Born in Germany, Meyer- Kassel studied art at the University of Munich before immigrating to the United States following the turmoil at the end of World War I. He endured the Great Depression in New York City before being invited to Pasadena, California, in 1935. It was on that trip he became fascinated by the West. Within a year, he and his wife moved to Reno, then Carson City and finally Genoa, at the base of the Tahoe Range. Over the next 30 years Meyer- Kassel would devote his career to Nevada and the West, capturing picturesque…
In the mid-1970s Richard Prince was an aspiring artist working in Time magazine’s tear sheet department, where he would frequently come across advertisements featuring photographs of products and models. Prince eventually took the advertisements and photographed them, often only altering the framing of the original images. His most famous series, Untitled (cowboy), featured images from Marlboro cigarette ads and showed cowboys chasing down horses and cattle in highcountry pastures. Prince’s artistic methods, sometimes called “rephotographing,” touched off a firestorm of controversy that centered on the nature of art, the conventional meanings and limits of photography, and art ownership. The artist is once again revisiting Untitled (cowboy) for new work created in 2015 and 2016, work that will be the focus of a new exhibition, Richard Prince: Untitled (cowboy) now open…
On January 9, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Autry Museum of the American West announced an unprecedented new partnership that will allow both museums to expand their programming content by sharing their respective collections. The two museums will also undertake joint programs and exhibitions, as well as publications. The announcement was made during a discussion about the evolving and collaborative approach for museums in the 21st century, presented by LACMA director and CEO Michael Govan and Autry Museum president and CEO W. Richard West Jr. The two Los Angeles-based museums will now be able to extensively explore the art of the American West, both past and present, in photography, paintings, sculpture and other holdings, including ceramics, weavings and more from cultures that include the American…
