Join us for a special day of music, refreshments, and family activities at the grand opening of Cowboys Real and Imagined on Sunday, April 14. At 2 pm, guest curator B. Byron Price, director of the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West at the University of Oklahoma and director of the University of Oklahoma Press speaks on “The Making of a Cowboy Hero" in the History Museum Auditorium.
From 3-5 pm, enjoy refreshments courtesy of the Women's Board of the Museum of New Mexico and live music by Bill Hearne from 3-5 pm.
In addition, Santa Fe's JD Noble, who has been forming western hats for nearly 30 years, will joining us to show some of the tools used to make cowboy hats and explain how hats are sized and fitted. Using a steamer, he'll show his conformateur, a wonderful 19th-century device used to measure head sizes precisely. Take home a small sample of hat felt and use your imagination to design your own cowboy hat.
Free with admission (Sundays free to NM residents).
For his talk, Price focuses on that period after the Civil War when our nation remained divided and needed an icon it could agree upon, identify with, and root for. Through the deliberate machinations of Theodore Roosevelt, Owen Wister, Frederic Remington, William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, and Charles Russell, one of the lowest-paid workers in the West was dusted off and transformed into a figure who carried a nation’s values, morals and courage: The American Cowboy. A healthy dose of romance mixed with authenticity, he captured the nation’s imagination and left the hearts of little boys (and quite a few little girls) yearning for horse-backed adventures in a frontier West.
Cowboys Real and Imagined explores New Mexico’s cowboy legacy from its origin in the Spanish vaquero tradition through itinerant hired hands, outlaws, rodeo stars, cowboy singers, Tom Mix movies and more. Guest curated by B. Byron Price, director of the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West at the University of Oklahoma and director of the University of Oklahoma Press, the exhibit grounds the cowboy story in New Mexico through rare photographs, cowboy gear, movies and art. The largest original exhibit mounted by the museum since 2009’s Fashioning New Mexico, it includes a bounty of artifacts ranging in size from the palm-sized tintype of Billy the Kid purchased at a 2011 auction by William Koch to the chuck wagon once used by cowboys on New Mexico’s legendary Bell Ranch.
The full programming schedule for Cowboys Real and Imagined:
Sunday, March 10, 2pm—Don Edwards, America’s Cowboy Balladeer
The Grammy-nominated singer, guitarist, songwriter, and historian sings and plays old-time ballads and cowboy songs. $25 at the History Museum Shop; call (505) 982-9543 or log onto www.newmexicocreates.org and click on “Museum Products.” Seating is limited.
Saturday, April 13, 6:30pm—Members Preview.
Museum of New Mexico Foundation members get a first peek at the exhibit and a chance to put on their best cowboy and cowgirl duds. To join, call (505) 982-6366.
Sunday, April 14—Grand Opening.
Visit the exhibit, enjoy refreshments and, at 2 pm, hear a lecture by guest curator B. Byron Price, director of the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West at the University of Oklahoma and director of the University of Oklahoma Press. Free with admission (Sundays free to NM residents).
Friday, April 26, 6pm—Cowboy movie night: “Tom Mix and Ranch Life in the Great Southwest,” with journalist and film critic Jon Bowman.
Besides the 1910 Ranch Life, see a showing of the 1915 short, Local Color, filmed in New Mexico. Free.
Sunday, May 5, 2pm—“I See By Your Outfit: Historic Cowboy Clothing,” a presentation by Emmy award-winning costume designer Cathy Smith.
Smith has presented at the Smithsonian Institutions’ Renwick Gallery in 2003 and the Trappings of the American West exhibition in 2008. Her lecture is an accurate and humorous look at the historical evolution of the American cowboy through photos of his costume, equipment and horses. Examples of Smith’s costumes and pieces from her historic cowboy clothing collection are included in Cowboys Real and Imagined. Free with admission (Sundays free to NM residents).
Friday, May 17, 6pm—Cowboy movie night: “An Introduction to The Hi-Lo County,” with Max Evans and Jim Harris.The authors discuss how Evans’ background led to his storied career, including the making of movies from his works, with a showing The Hi Lo Country (1998). Free.
Friday, July 19, 6pm—Cowboy movie night: “Edward Abbey and Lonely Are the Brave,” with oral historian Jack Loeffler.
Loeffler discusses his friendship with author Edward Abbey and the transformation of Abbey’s novel The Brave Cowboy into a 1962 icon of Western movies, filmed in and around Albuquerque, the Sandia Mountains, Manzano Mountains, Tijeras Canyon, and Kirtland Air Force Base. Free.
Sunday, August 4, 2pm—“Pride in the Saddle in New Mexico: The Story of Gay Rodeo,” by Out West producer Gregory Hinton and photographer Blake Little.
Hinton and Little talk about the history of gay rodeo in New Mexico and Little’s rare collection of gay rodeo photographs taken from 1988-1992, when he was a champion bull rider in the International Gay Rodeo Association. Little’s photographs will be exhibited at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis in 2014. Free with admission (Sundays free to NM residents).
Friday, August 9, 6pm—“Jack Thorp’s Songs of the Cowboys,” by music historians Mark Gardner and Rex Rideout.
Gardner and Rideout perform and discuss the cowboy ballads collected by New Mexico cowboy, rancher, surveyor, and state cattle inspector N. Howard “Jack” Thorp, who published the very first book of cowboy songs at Estancia, NM, in 1908. The Palace Press this year debuts a special, fine-press reprint of the book. Gardner and Rideout use vintage instruments and historic playing styles to present a close approximation of how this music sounded. Free.
Saturday and Sunday, August 10 and 11, 10am to 4pm—“Wild West Weekend.”
Join us for two days of family fun celebrating the heritage of cowboys, featuring singing cowboys (and gals!), saddle makers, trick ropers, bootmakers, poets, dutch-oven cooking demonstrations, and lots more. Mark Gardner and Rex Rideout will lead a one-hour workshop for families on traditional cowboy songs and discuss the New Mexico cowboy lifestyle and culture as represented in the songs. Free with admission (Sundays free to NM residents; children 16 and under free daily).
Friday, September 20, 6pm—Cowboy movie night: “On the Trail of The Cowboys,” with journalist and film critic Robert Nott.
Filmed at various locations in New Mexico and elsewhere, The Cowboys (1972) is considered one of John Wayne’s greatest movies. Based on the William Dale Jennings’ novel, the movie follows a cattle drive from Montana to South Dakota with real “boys,” after the real ones flee the range in search of gold. Free.
Friday, November 15, 6pm: Cowboy movie night—“Oh, to be a Cowboy,” with best-selling author David Morrell (of Rambo fame).
Based on Frank Harris’s My Reminiscences as a Cowboy,” the 1958 movie Cowboy stars Glenn Ford and Jack Lemmon. A Chicago hotel clerk dreams of life as a cowboy and gets his shot in a cattle-driving outfit. Not surprisingly, the tenderfoot finds out life on the range is neither what he expected nor what he's been looking for. Free.
Friday, January 17, 6pm—Cowboy movie night: “Revisiting City Slickers,” with author Johnny Boggs.
A mid-life crisis plagues a man and his friends, who find renewal and purpose on a cattle-driving vacation, filmed at various locations in New Mexico. Starring Billy Crystal and Jack Palance (1991). Free.
Cowboys Real and Imagined is generously supported by the Brindle Foundation; Burnett Foundation; Rooster and Jean Cowden Family, Cowden Ranch; Jane and Charlie Gaillard; Albert and Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation, Houston; Candace Good Jacobson in memory of Thomas Jefferson Good III; Moise Livestock Company; Newman’s Own Foundation; New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association; New Mexico Humanities Council; Palace Guard; Eugenia Cowden Pettit and Michael Pettit; 98.1 FM Radio Free Santa Fe; and the many contributors to the Director’s Leadership, Annual Education, and Exhibitions Development Funds.
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