Past Exhibition: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Warriors

Past Exhibition:

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Warriors: Photographs by Gertrude Käsebier

April 10 – August 8, 2010

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Warriors: Photographs by Gertrude Kasebier was a cooperative exhibition with the Photographic History Collection of the National Museum of American History with the Smithsonian Institution. Since its appearance at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in 2010, it has traveled to several other museums across the country.

In 1898, New York photographer Gertrude Käsebier embarked on a deeply personal project, editing a set of prints that were among the most compelling of her celebrated body of work. Käsebier was on the threshold of a career that would establish her as both the leading portraitist of her time, and an extraordinary art photographer, her latest undertaking being inspired by viewing the grand parade of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West troupe en route to Madison Square Garden in New York. Within weeks, Käsebier began photographing in her Fifth Avenue studio, formally and informally, the Lakota (Sioux) people traveling with the show.

Since 1969, more than 100 of these photographs have been preserved in the Photographic History Collection in the National Museum of American History. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Warriors: Photographs by Gertrude Käsebier represented the first time this important collection was displayed together in more than a century.

Also included were related ledger art drawings by Lakota artists, historical camera equipment, and more.