John Wayne stood looking at a painting by Olaf Wieghorst, an artist he knew and admired and whose work he collected. The painting, Spring Rain, is a night scene depicting a mounted cowboy in the rain, water running off his hat, coat, and his drenched...
If a picture says a thousand words, then Hopi potter Nampeyo [c. 1859 – 1942] has shared many great tales. Widely known as the most remarkable Pueblo potter of all time, Nampeyo was a prolific artist, and her legacy upholds its place in the world...
Last summer, turn-of-the-20th-century photographer Royal W. (Roland) Reed Jr. finally received recognition for his imagery of Indigenous Americans at a permanent exhibit in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The Roland Reed Gallery has been a long time coming and honors an artist whose untimely death in 1934...
One morning in 1923, Swedish-American painter Gunnar Mauritz Widforss was having breakfast in Camp Curry at Yosemite National Park when Park Service Director Stephen Mather asked if he could join him. Mather was out of uniform, as was his custom, so he could solicit honest...
R.E.C. Chipper Thompson, husband of the late artist Lanford Monroe [1950–2000], remembers a visit they made to Claude Monet’s gardens in Giverny, France. Monet’s house was closed to the public that day, but Monroe wanted to see inside. So, with permission from the guard, Thompson...
When the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco was badly damaged by fire following the deadly earthquake of 1906, architect and engineer Julia Morgan was hired to design and oversee the building’s restoration. Known for her hands-on approach, the 34-year-old architect arrived early on the first...
By the time Catharine Carter Critcher set off on her own for Taos, New Mexico in 1920, she was 52 and had been making her living from art for almost three decades. She had spent five years in Paris, started an art school there and...
Post-war American artist Paul Harris [1925 – 2018] decided to become a sculptor while attending the University of New Mexico in 1948, where he studied with Agnes Martin. After that, a summer working under Hans Hofmann became crucial to his creative development. Primarily a sculptor,...
Friends called her Beck or Becky. She dressed in traditional Western garb — denim breeches, boots, and kerchiefs — and topped her mane of prematurely silver hair with felt hats. An ever-present cigarette dangled from her lips. Her face, sometimes embellished with bright red lipstick,...
You’d think the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” would be especially appropriate when describing photographer Edward S. Curtis [1868–1952]. After all, the portfolio that comprises his life’s work, The North American Indian, includes hundreds of images of Indigenous Americans. These photographs have...