Cowboys Real and Imagined

Apr 14, 2013 through Mar 16, 2014

When America needed hard workers, the cowboy was there. The job was dirty and difficult, low-paid and lowly regarded. But when an America torn by the Civil War needed a hero to unite its soul, the unassuming cowboy was an unlikely—and ultimately lasting—pick. Since riding out of Spanish horse culture, he’s been an itinerant hired hand, an outlaw, a movie star, a rodeo athlete, a radio yodeler, and a rhinestoned disco diva. He’s been Spanish, Mexican, African American, Anglo, male, female, straight, and gay. His image has been co-opted to sell trucks, beer, boots, beans, jeans, tires, cigarettes, leather couches, presidential candidates, and a lifestyle far beyond the means of real-life buckaroos. 

Using artifacts and photographs from its wide-ranging collections, along with loans from more than 100 people and museums, Cowboys Real and Imagined (April 14, 2013, through March 16, 2014) blends a chronological history of Southwestern cowboys with the rise of a manufactured mystique as at home on city streets as it is in a stockyard. Augmented by archival footage, oral histories, musical performances, and a programming series that includes showings of classic Western movies filmed in New Mexico, the exhibition anchors the cowboy story in New Mexico, a place that gave birth to the real thing and held onto it longer than most other states.


More ...


Jewish cowboys

Vaquero clothing

Reconstructed chuck wagon

Bell Ranch chuck wagon

Lasso that calf

Buckaroo

Artifacts from Cowboys Real and Imagined

Artifacts from Cowboys Real and Imagined

Artifacts from Cowboys Real and Imagined

Artifacts from Cowboys Real and Imagined

Artifacts from Cowboys Real and Imagined

Artifacts from Cowboys Real and Imagined

Artifacts from Cowboys Real and Imagined

Cigar box label

Lila Baca

Jack Thorp

Jack Follansbee's cowboys

Ellie Powell

Cigar box label

Bucking horse

Agnes Morley Cleaveland

Cowboy camp near Deming

Cattle pens near Deming

Bread-making in camp, Deming

Cows under a windmill

The cowboy doctor

Actor Tom Mix

Gov. Clyde Tingley

Thomas B. Catron

Tex Austin

Tex Austin's Forked Lightnin Ranch

State Fair

Clovis cattle sale

Bordello woman

A Pueblo Indian cowboy

Navajo (Din'e) riders

Man in fiesta costume

Jicarilla Cowboy

Canjilon Ranch

Ghost Ranch

George McJunkin

Remuda

Bell Ranch chuck wagon

Cattle ranchers, ca. 1885

Canjilon Ranch porch

Bucking bronco

Woman at Brush Ranch

Branding cattle, Deming, NM

Hanging of Black Jack Ketchum

Rough Riders

Cowgirl at rodeo

Raton cowboys

Bell Ranch

Back to event/exhibition details »