Exhibits
AHC Exhibits
Alfred Jacob Miller Paintings in New Exhibition at UW American Heritage Center
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)
‘Armed in the Wilderness’: An Exhibit About Outdoor Recreation, Conservation, and the Women and Men Who Built the Literary Genre
A copy of Izaak Walton’s “The Compleat Angler” is part of a new exhibition at UW’s American Heritage Center. (AHC Photo)
“‘Armed in the Wilderness’: An Exhibit About Outdoor Recreation, Conservation, and the Women and Men Who Built the Literary Genre” is a new exhibition at the American Heritage Center (AHC) of the University of Wyoming.
It highlights the UW Toppan Rare Books Library’s vast collection of outdoor recreation books and is on display through February at the Toppan Rare Books Library room in the AHC’s exhibit hall.
Books on outdoor recreation -- whether it be fishing, hunting or wildlife viewing -- make up a large part of Toppan’s collecting area. This is not surprising, as the library’s founding donors, Fred and Clara Toppan, spent a lot of their time outdoors. And when they were stuck indoors, they enjoyed reading about the outdoors.
The majority of their book collection consists of books about hunting and fishing, both fiction and nonfiction. To honor their interests and their book collection, the exhibition was designed to focus on fishing, hunting and guns, but also shows the depth of the genre.
Theodore Roosevelt’s “African Game Trails” is another book displayed in “‘Armed in the Wilderness’: An Exhibit About Outdoor Recreation, Conservation, and the Women and Men Who Built the Literary Genre.” (AHC Photo)
Visitors can see books dating back to 1704, including early copies of Izaak Walton’s “The Compleat Angler,” and the earliest English translation of Dame Juliana Berner’s “A Treatise on Fishing with a Hook.” Other parts of the exhibition illustrate key events in the outdoor sporting industry, including the conservation efforts of the Boone and Crockett Club in the late 19th century and Marjory Stoneman Douglas’ pioneering work to safeguard the Everglades in the early 20th century.
There also are works featuring the African hunting expeditions of Americans including Osa and Martin Johnson as well as works on the art of fly tying, as demonstrated by The Orvis Company and Gary LaFontaine. In all these subjects, the exhibition interweaves the roles played by men and women in popularizing the sports of fishing, hunting and shooting.
“The breadth of writers and subjects regarding outdoor recreation is fascinating,” Toppan Librarian Mary Beth Brown says. “Every time we came across a new author who wrote about the art of fishing or a book about safaris in Africa, it was like another window on the subject opened, and we had so many more books to look at and subjects to research. In particular, I was excited about how women started to design their own clothing or adapt their husbands’ so that they could be comfortably and properly attired during their outdoor adventures.”
The exhibition runs through Feb. 24. The AHC’s exhibit hall is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
George A. Rentschler Room
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.
Alfred Jacob Miller
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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.
Marian H. Rochelle Gateway Center Exhibits
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.
Floor 1: A Glimpse into Campus Life: University of Wyoming Yearbooks, 1948-1958
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!
Floor 2: Ranch to Rodeo: Cowgirls of Wyoming
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.
Floor 3: Scoring the Silly Symphonies
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.
