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.
Welcome to our May issue! The entire issue is full of our first-class gallery previews and art features from across the country. This is no different from other months but the live vibe is at the forefront of this issue. This is also a special issue for our annual Collector’s Focus: Painting Canyons & Deserts, which highlights some of those classic landscape scenes that Western collectors love. You, our readers, are finding ways to buy art, be it in-person or virtual, and we love hearing how you’re connecting to the market. Western Art Collector will continue to provide art to you to build your collections. This is what we plan for every month! Next up, this is our 12th annual State of the Art: New Mexico destination guide. Start your…
One of my favorite Western paintings is a magnificent and large work by William R. Leigh at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. If you’ve been to the museum, you’ll likely know what piece I’m referring to because it’s hard to miss. At more than 10 feet wide, it commands quite a presence at a museum that already has some serious Western art in its galleries. The painting is titled The Leader’s Downfall, and it shows Native American riders charging into a herd of horses in a dusty desert scene. The work is done in Leigh’s dramatic high-action style that exaggerated forms and movement in order to tell a more compelling and dangerous story. When I’m at the museum for events and shows, I always make…
APRIL Now Open NEW WEST FINE ART Connor Liljestrom Jackson, WY– (307) 201-5029 www.newwestfineart.com April 15 DOWNTOWN SCOTTSDALE Gold Palette ArtWalks: Western Week Scottsdale, AZ www.scottsdalegalleries.com April 16-May 7 JEMEZ FINE ART GALLERY Plein Air Painters of New Mexico Jemez Non-Juried Members Paint Out and Show Jemez Springs – (575) 829-3340 www.jemezfineart.com or www.papnm.org Through April 17 MARK SUBLETTE MEDICINE MAN GALLERY Dennis Ziemienski: Grand Canyon State Tucson, AZ – (520) 722-7798 www.medicinemangallery.com April 17-25 OLMSTED PLEIN AIR INVITAT IONAL The 7th Annual Invitational of America’s Masters of Plein Air Atlanta, GA – (404) 376-7075 www.olmstedpleinair.com April 20 BONHAMS California Art Los Angeles, CA – (323) 850-7500 www.bonhams.com April 20-May 28 MUSEUM OF THE BIG BEND A Century of Fine Art in the Big Bend: SRSU Faculty & Students 1920-2020…
May 6 Hindman’s Couse-Sharp Auction Chicago, IL – (312) 280-1212 May 6 Hindman’s Western Paintings & Sculpture Auction Denver, CO – (303) 825-1855 May 7 Heritage Auction’s American Art Signature Auction Dallas, TX – (214) 528-3500 May 18 Christie’s American Art Auction New York, NY – (212) 636-2000 May 20 Bonhams’ American Art Auction New York, NY – (212) 710-1307 May 19 Sotheby’s American Art Auction New York, NY – (212) 606-7000 May 25 John Moran Auctioneer’s Art of the American West Monrovia, CA – (626) 628-9341 May 29-30 Santa Fe Art Auction’s Art of the West Santa Fe, NM – (505) 954-5858 June 25-26 Prix de West Oklahoma City, OK – (405) 478-2250 June 25-27 Brian Lebel’s Cody Old West Show & Auction Santa Fe, NM - (480) 779-9378…
Davison Packard Koenig Executive Director Couse-Sharp Historic Site Taos, NM (575) 751-0369 couse-sharp.org What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why? I’m excited about our first exhibition in the Lunder Research Center. Mark Maggiori: Taos Pueblo Portraits opening October 2. Mark is working with a body of some 6,000 studies E.I. Couse produced between 1902 and1930. Both artists studied at Academie Julian in Paris, and using the photographic record Couse left behind, Mark is stepping into his shoes some 100 years later—in a sense completing the work, with Mark’s own interpretation and sensitivity. What are you reading? Sabino’s Map: Life in Chimayo’s Old Plaza, a fascinating account of village life in one of New Mexico’s last intact historic plazas.…
The Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis has acquired a watercolor piece by Florida painter Dean Mitchell. The museum unveiled the work in February, during Black History Month, as it celebrated the historical significance of the work and its artist. The piece, For Freedom, shows a Black soldier in the Union Army during the Civil War, “standing at attention with his rifle and gazing resolutely forward,” the museum notes. Mitchell painted the work in 2020 and used a Kansas-based Civil War re-enactor as a model. “African Americans are centrally important to the 19th-century history of the American West, but were largely unrepresented in artworks created at the time. In recent years, the Eiteljorg Museum has actively acquired art reflecting diversity to add to its Western art collections,” Eiteljorg president and CEO John…
