Session 1 – Earliest images of the West: works by the earliest arts in the West will be viewed within the context of American art of the time; includes artists George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, Alfred Jacob Miller and John Mix Stanley, plus the Hudson River School first generation
Session 2 – Landscapes of the West: panoramic views of the West will be discussed within the context of American art of the time, including a post Civil War shift in Western art, away from Native American subjects to the land itself, includes artists Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran and others, Hudson River School second generation
Session 3 – Remington, Russell and Friends: as early as the 1890s artists are looking back to a West that was, nostalgia becomes an important subject, looking at art by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell and their peers like W.R. Leigh, N.C. Wyeth and many others
Session 4 – Taos and Santa Fe Art Colonies: The Taos Society of Artists formed in the 1910s to promote the work of the members to museums and collectors, and bolster the markets for their work, twenty years later they had achieved most of their goals and no longer seemed necessary
Session 5 – The Cowboy Artists of America and Peers: The founding of the CAA in 1965 helps lead to an increased interest in traditional style art in the contemporary period, includes the four artists who founded the group, plus standouts like John Clymer, Frank McCarthy, Howard Terpning and Martin Grelle
Session 6 – The Miracles from IAIA: The early faculty and graduates from this school, founded in Santa Fe in 1962, help lead to an increased interest in Indigenous art in the contemporary period which stretches beyond the Native artists to others portraying the West in modern ways like Thom Ross, Kim Wiggins, Donna Howell-Sickles and Billy Schenck
Session 7 – Sculpture: Throughout the course most of the emphasis has been on paintings, during this session we full turn our attention to three dimensional art, and artists like James Earle Fraser, Phiminster Proctor, Frederic Remington, Harry Jackson, Allan Houser and John Coleman.
Session 8 – Photography: Throughout the course most of the emphasis has been on paintings, during this session we full turn our attention to photography, and investigate how the desire to shoot in the West drove much of the technical improvements made in the field, artists include Edward Curtis, Ansel Adams, Dorthea Lange, Imogene Cunningham, the Weston’s, Jay Dusard and Barbara van Cleev
