Blanton Conquers The West

By Jordan Schraeder in 40 Acres, Special on January 16, 2012 at 5:30 pm | No Comments

The Blanton Museum of Art’s C.R. Smith Collection has long showed visitors how the West was won through the eyes of renowned 19th-century artists, including Charles Russell, Maynard Dixon, and Henry Farny.

Now, in the collection’s latest display, paintings, sculptures, and printed works investigate the physical western frontier and its place in the American psyche. Native Americans, cowboys, industrialization, and the then-popular idea of Manifest Destiny all have a place in Go West! Representations of the American Frontier.

Go West also features works owned by other UT entities, including paintings by Frederic Remington and Albert Bierstadt that document westward expansion.

To add context, museum curators have added a small counterpart titled The Contemporary West. This addition serves as the response by 20th- and 21st-century artists—including Jeremy Blake, Ed Ruscha, and Luis Jimenez—to the works of their predecessors and highlights the evolution of the West over a mere century.

While they aren’t the Wild West movies we know and love, the works in the Go West will give you the same feeling of true American nostalgia—and may even spur you to break in a new pair of cowboy boots afterward.

Go West runs from Jan. 14 to Sept. 23.

Photo courtesy The Blanton Museum.

Tags: Blanton Museum of Art, C.R. Smith Collection, exhibit, Frederic Remington, Go West