American Heritage Center
Centennial Complex
2111 Willet Drive
Laramie, WY 82071
Phone: (307) 766-4114
Email: ahcref@uwyo.edu
A new exhibition titled “An Artist’s Journey West: Alfred Jacob Miller, 1837” will open Thursday, May 22, at the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center (AHC).
Miller was the first Euro-American to paint scenes inside the Rocky Mountains, which he accomplished on a trip to the Green River Rendezvous in 1837. The exhibition runs through Friday, Aug. 29, and presents paintings from three collections from Tim and Cathi Newton, Naoma Tate and the AHC.
The exhibition celebrates two exciting milestones, AHC Director Paul Flesher says.
First, it welcomes the AHC’s Miller paintings back to permanent display after a two-year absence. The center owns 21 of Miller’s paintings.
Those central to the 1837 trip have been on tour with the Miller exhibition titled “Alfred Jacob Miller: Revisiting the Rendezvous in Scotland and Today,” which appeared at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody and the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, Ind.
All of the AHC’s Miller paintings are now again on display in Laramie.
Second, thanks to the generosity of two AHC patrons, the exhibition brings Miller paintings from two collections together with the AHC’s holdings, Flesher says.
The collections are those from Tate and the Newtons -- both from Cody. The paintings from the two collections complement the AHC’s works, featuring both the earliest view of Wyoming’s Hell’s Gate and a rare nighttime scene painted by Miller. This is the first time the 28 paintings have been displayed together, Flesher adds.
Miller was hired by William Drummond Stewart -- a future Scottish baronet -- to record his journey with the American Fur Company to the Green River Rendezvous in 1837. During the trip, he and his companions also spent time hunting the wildlife of the Rocky Mountains. Miller recorded hundreds of scenes in watercolors during the trip.
Once back from the trip, Miller began to use the watercolor sketches as models for his oil paintings. In 1840, Stewart brought Miller out to Murthly Castle, his ancestral Scottish home, where Miller spent a year creating paintings to decorate the castle’s rooms.
This summer, the three AHC collections will bring together watercolor sketches from the 1837 trip, oil paintings from 1840 and works painted in later years but based on the earlier works.
The joint exhibition will run until the end of August, but the AHC’s paintings will remain on permanent display afterward, Flesher says.
“Hunting Elk” from artist Alfred Jacob Miller, a gift from the Graff Family, is on display at the UW American Heritage Center (AHC). A new exhibition titled “An Artist’s Journey West: Alfred Jacob Miller, 1837” will open Thursday, May 22, at the AHC. (American Heritage Center Photo)
“Hunting Elk” from artist Alfred Jacob Miller, a gift from the Graff Family, is on display at the UW American Heritage Center (AHC). A new exhibition titled “An Artist’s Journey West: Alfred Jacob Miller, 1837” will open Thursday, May 22, at the AHC. (American Heritage Center Photo)
The American Heritage Center is excited to host Through the Lens: The Life & Legacy of Richard Throssel. The exhibition features photographs from the collection of the American Heritage Center (AHC) and was developed by the Western Heritage Center in Billings, Montana.
Richard Throssel spent a decade working with the Crow Indians in Montana at the start of the last century and photographing them. This exhibit about his life highlights his unique visual perspective on the tribe—telling their story from the perspective of an insider.
Born in 1882 in Washington state, Richard Throssel came to southern Montana in 1900 and soon began working at the Crow Indian reservation along the Wyoming/Montana border. In 1905, he took up photography and in 1906 the Crow adopted him into the tribe.
Throssel’s tribal membership gave him access to tribal activities and to people that no other photographer had at the time for the Crows or any other tribe. He took more than 2000 photographs during his association with the Crows, before and after moving to Billings, MT.
The exhibit tells Throssel’s story and how his work is now recognized as an important treasure trove of visual information about the Crows and other tribes as they transitioned from a horse-based nomadic culture to a more settled life on the reservation at the start of the twentieth century.
The exhibit resulted from an informal partnership between the American Heritage Center in Laramie at University of Wyoming and the Western Heritage Center in Billings, MT. The exhibit was curated by Lauren Hunley of the Western Heritage Center from photographs and negatives preserved in the AHC. Furthermore, several members of the Crow tribe participated in the exhibit’s design and photograph selection.
The exhibit shares the story of Richard Throssel and how his photographs of Apsaalooke (Crow), Tsit-tsit-tsa (Northern Cheyenne), and Lakota (Sioux) people provided agency and insight to indigenous cultures in transition. Lauren Hunley, Community Historian of the Western Heritage Center, explains, “As a Metis man of Cree and English heritage, Throssel’s Native ancestry gave him unique entrance and perspective into Native life. While other photographers are photographing white ideals of romanticized indigenous life, Throssel is working with his subjects to show their life as they wanted to be depicted.”
AHC Director Paul Flesher states, “The AHC is pleased that the Western Historical Center decided to feature the photographs of Richard Throssel held here. We are excited to be the first location of the exhibit after it finished its run in Billings.”
The exhibit is open 9-5, five days a week. It runs from January 20 to August 29, 2025, at the UW’s American Heritage Center, 2111 Willet Drive, Laramie, WY. For more information, visit https://www.uwyo.edu/ahc/exhibits.html or send an email to AHCRef@uwyo.edu.
The American Heritage Center’s George A. Rentschler Room is home to significant western paintings, including thirteen by Henry Farny and one by Frederic Remington. These paintings appear as they did in the library of Mr. Rentschler, a New York City businessman and western enthusiast.
Henry Farny (1847-1916)
After studying in Rome, Dusseldorf and Munich as a young man, Farny settled in Cincinnati. In 1881, he began traveling into the American West, including Wyoming. During his travels, Farny sketched, took photographs and collected Indian artifacts and photographs. Returning to his Cincinnati studio, Farny worked from his own illustrations and memory, relied on his collection of artifacts, and occasionally employed live models to create his unique style of Western art.
Despite this method of production, Farny’s Indian paintings are considered some of the most accurate of the genre. His paintings of Native Americans were highly sought after during Farny’s lifetime, although his work disappeared into near obscurity after his death. Collectors rediscovered Farny in the 1960s because of increasing interest in the “true West.”
Frederic Remington (1861-1909)
Frederic Remington studied art at Yale University and took his first trip into the American West in 1881, the same year as Farny. Although a failed businessman, he became famous as an illustrator of the West. His first full-page cover artwork appeared in Harper’s Weekly in 1886 when he was just 25.
In the 1890s, he became a favorite of the American cavalry in the West, especially the troops led by General Nelson Miles. His numerous paintings of soldiers at this this time often used a monochromatic palate, which gave a sense of realistic, almost photographic, quality. The Rentschler Remington painting belongs to this period.
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NEW UPDATE: The Alfred Jacob Miller paintings are back from being on loan at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming and at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis. |
The Alfred Jacob Miller paintings from the Everett D. Graff family and Robert C. Graff art collections appear on permanent display in the American Heritage Center’s new Gallery One. A young American artist, Miller was commissioned by a Scottish noble, William Drummond Stewart, to document his expedition from the Missouri frontier to the 1837 Green River Rendezvous near modern Pinedale Wyoming. During the six-month journey with Stewart and the American Fur Company, Miller made more than 200 watercolor sketches. He used these sketches as the basis for large oil paintings he painted to hang in Stewart’s Murthly Castle in Scotland. Miller was the first European American artist to capture the interior of the Rocky Mountains. Some of the Murthly Castle paintings are now at the American Heritage Center.
The American Heritage Center is pleased to work with the UW Foundation to curate photograph and image exhibits for the Gateway Center. Three exhibits are now on display.
As the archives of the University of Wyoming, the American Heritage Center (AHC), holds numerous collections from UW departments, professors, presidents, students, and alumni. Many of these folks have had considerable artistic talent they’ve often used to promote and shine a light on all the culture, classes, and opportunities UW has to offer.
This exhibit features items from the University of Wyoming’s University Relations & Media Services records (collection # 512001) held at the AHC. The collection contains publications of various kinds dating from 1868 to 2000. In this exhibit, you’ll see covers of student journals, class schedules, distance education, magazines, and other publications where people in the UW community put their brushes, pencils, carving tools, and cameras to work for these fantastic covers.
Enjoy this step back in time at UW!
The early and mid-20th century in Wyoming saw women playing an active and essential role in both ranch life and rodeo culture. These images depict the grit, strength, and independence of cowgirls who worked the land, managed livestock, and competed in rodeo events like Cheyenne Frontier Days.
The largest image in this exhibit features Clara Raab Toppan. Raised in Laramie, Clara graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1931 with an accounting degree and became Wyoming’s first female certified public accountant in 1945. She went on to work at Grand Teton National Park, work her husband’s family ranch outside the park, and establish a private accounting practice in Jackson. She was later honored as a distinguished alumna of the University of Wyoming and Governor Mike Sullivan declared June 22, 1990, as Clara Raab Toppan Day. Clara was instrumental in founding the Toppan Rare Books Library at the American Heritage Center.
All images are from the J.S. Palen Collection (#10472), the Clara and Frederick Toppan papers (#6802), and other collections housed at the American Heritage Center.
Carl W. Stalling (1891-1972) was an American composer whose work in film, music, and animation helped push the boundaries of what was possible with cartoons and short films in the 20th century. His work scoring music for various Walt Disney productions and the Warner Brothers' classic cartoon, Looney Tunes, helped solidify his mark on animation and music history.
Carl Stalling was also a noted innovator in the motion picture industry, with his invention of the tick method, a film technique used as standard practice to combine scored music with animated scenes.
The American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming is proud to feature selected materials from the Carl Stalling papers (#5725). This collection contains original music scores and cue sheets from Stalling’s most famous works, other commercial music, photos of celebrities, correspondence, and other material related to the motion picture industry. In addition, the collection features original hand-drawn sketches from Ub Iwerks, the original artist of Mickey Mouse and other Silly Symphonies shorts, such as “The Skeleton Dance.”
The historical significance and material content within the Carl Stalling papers make it a favorite of many researchers, employees, and visitors of the American Heritage Center.
American Heritage Center
Centennial Complex
2111 Willet Drive
Laramie, WY 82071
Phone: (307) 766-4114
Email: ahcref@uwyo.edu
