NEWS RELEASE January 8, 2009
FRED JONES JR. MUSEUM OF ART
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA - NORMAN
CONTACT MICHAEL BENDURE, Public Relations Officer, 405-325-3178, mbendure@ou.edu
FAX: 405-325-7696
www.ou.edu/fjjma
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WITH IMAGE
NORMAN – Kicking off a full year of Native American and Western American artwork, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art unveils its first exhibition for 2009 at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 23. “Borderlands: Images of the American West” reveals a look at the Western United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“Around the turn of the 20th century, American artists enchanted Eastern audiences with picturesque landscapes of Western terrain, images of the unfamiliar dress and customs of Native American communities and romanticized recounts of cultural conflict,” said Mark White, Eugene B. Adkins curator for the museum.
“Western borderlands, those spaces of intercultural connection along the boundaries of American and Native American communities, offered artists ample inspiration to this end. This exhibition presents a survey of artists who sought subject matter in the borderlands.”
Contained within the exhibition are works from both the Native American and Western American perspective, with colorful landscapes, images of Native culture, Civil War troops and more. Several dozen artists are represented, including one of the largest paintings by Maynard Dixon.
A guest lecture by Dean Porter, director emeritus at the Snite Museum of Art at University of Notre Dame, will accompany the exhibition’s opening at 6 p.m. The opening is free and open to the public.
Artists accompanied military campaigns and scientific surveys in the years following the Civil War, and their images appeared not only in exhibitions, military reports and scientific treatises, but also in the pages of Harper’s Weekly and later such 10-cent magazines as Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post.
Harper’s, for instance, sent Rufus F. Zogbaum to Fort Reno in Indian Territory in 1888, on the eve of the Oklahoma land runs, to document the military’s interaction with the Cheyenne at Darlington Agency. Frederic Remington, too, had been on assignment from Harper’s when he accompanied General Nelson A. Miles on his campaign against the Apache in the 1880s as part of the journal’s enthusiasm for the Indian Wars.
Although journals and newspapers often prompted artists to investigate life in the American borderlands, some artists, such as Charles Schreyvogel and Edwin W. Deming, visited Indian nations in the West throughout their careers, independent of journalistic sponsorship, in search of fresh inspiration.
Deming formed close relationships with the Native communities he visited and even lived with the Yuma Apache for an extended period of time. Both artists also viewed their enterprise as a form of preservation that would record for posterity peoples threatened by assimilation.
The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is located on the corner of Elm Avenue and Boyd Street, at 555 Elm Ave., on the OU Norman campus.
Admission to the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is free to OU students with a current student ID and museum association members, $5 for adults, $4 for seniors, $3 for children 6 to 17 years of age, $2 for OU faculty/staff, and free for children 5 and under. Admission is free on Tuesdays. The museum’s Web site is www.ou.edu/fjjma. Information and accommodations on the basis of disability are available by calling (405) 325-4938.
FRED JONES JR. MUSEUM OF ART
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA - NORMAN
CONTACT MICHAEL BENDURE, Public Relations Officer, 405-325-3178, mbendure@ou.edu
FAX: 405-325-7696
www.ou.edu/fjjma
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WITH IMAGE
‘Borderlands’ Explores Native, Western American Art at FJJMA
NORMAN – Kicking off a full year of Native American and Western American artwork, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art unveils its first exhibition for 2009 at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 23. “Borderlands: Images of the American West” reveals a look at the Western United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“Around the turn of the 20th century, American artists enchanted Eastern audiences with picturesque landscapes of Western terrain, images of the unfamiliar dress and customs of Native American communities and romanticized recounts of cultural conflict,” said Mark White, Eugene B. Adkins curator for the museum.
“Western borderlands, those spaces of intercultural connection along the boundaries of American and Native American communities, offered artists ample inspiration to this end. This exhibition presents a survey of artists who sought subject matter in the borderlands.”
Contained within the exhibition are works from both the Native American and Western American perspective, with colorful landscapes, images of Native culture, Civil War troops and more. Several dozen artists are represented, including one of the largest paintings by Maynard Dixon.
A guest lecture by Dean Porter, director emeritus at the Snite Museum of Art at University of Notre Dame, will accompany the exhibition’s opening at 6 p.m. The opening is free and open to the public.
Artists accompanied military campaigns and scientific surveys in the years following the Civil War, and their images appeared not only in exhibitions, military reports and scientific treatises, but also in the pages of Harper’s Weekly and later such 10-cent magazines as Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post.
Harper’s, for instance, sent Rufus F. Zogbaum to Fort Reno in Indian Territory in 1888, on the eve of the Oklahoma land runs, to document the military’s interaction with the Cheyenne at Darlington Agency. Frederic Remington, too, had been on assignment from Harper’s when he accompanied General Nelson A. Miles on his campaign against the Apache in the 1880s as part of the journal’s enthusiasm for the Indian Wars.
Although journals and newspapers often prompted artists to investigate life in the American borderlands, some artists, such as Charles Schreyvogel and Edwin W. Deming, visited Indian nations in the West throughout their careers, independent of journalistic sponsorship, in search of fresh inspiration.
Deming formed close relationships with the Native communities he visited and even lived with the Yuma Apache for an extended period of time. Both artists also viewed their enterprise as a form of preservation that would record for posterity peoples threatened by assimilation.
The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is located on the corner of Elm Avenue and Boyd Street, at 555 Elm Ave., on the OU Norman campus.
Admission to the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is free to OU students with a current student ID and museum association members, $5 for adults, $4 for seniors, $3 for children 6 to 17 years of age, $2 for OU faculty/staff, and free for children 5 and under. Admission is free on Tuesdays. The museum’s Web site is www.ou.edu/fjjma. Information and accommodations on the basis of disability are available by calling (405) 325-4938.