Beyond Our Walls
It is often said of our namesake, William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, that he brought the West to the world. Continuing that legacy, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West shares its own extraordinary object collection, exhibitions, and expertise beyond our walls with a national—and indeed international—audience.
From the loan of a few artifacts to complete traveling exhibitions, the Center of the West takes the authentic stories of the American West on the road. Here are some of the exhibitions around the country currently featuring objects from the Center.
Yellowstone: Invisible Boundaries
Invisible Boundaries: Exploring Yellowstone’s Great Animal Migrations was exhibited at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in 2016 and then traveled to other venues.
This special exhibition focuses on the migrations of elk and other charismatic, wide-ranging wildlife in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. It explores the challenges these animals face as they leave Yellowstone National Park and cross into surrounding multiple-use and private lands in search of winter resources. Their journeys link the ecosystem’s outermost foothills and ranchlands to its deepest, mountain wilderness. The exhibition blends science, photography, and contemporary art through the work of Arthur Middleton, Joe Riis, and James Prosek, with additional work by videographer Jennie Nichols.
Popular with visitors, Invisible Boundaries was produced by the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, and appeared there in 2016. The exhibition has since traveled to the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC, to Yale University’s Peabody Museum of Natural History, to the Natural History Museum of Utah, the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming, and the Livingston (MT) Depot Museum.
Click here to find out more about the exhibition as it originally appeared at the Center of the West.
Whitney Western Art Museum loans
Our Whitney Western Art Museum loans artworks to augment exhibitions at our fellow museums around the country. Here’s what’s traveling now or in the near future:
Natural Forces: Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington, a multi-venue traveling exhibition, includes five paintings from our Remington Studio Collection. The exhibition reveals connections between artistic themes and techniques used by the two acclaimed American artists. It first was exhibited at the Denver Art Museum in 2020, and then traveled to the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas.
The Whitney paintings included in Natural Forces illustrate Remington’s experimentation with impressionism in his depictions of North Country landscapes :
- Untitled (Fall Landscape), oil on canvas, 74.67
- Untitled (Impressionistic winter scene), oil on board, 75.67
- Chippewa Bay, oil on board, 2.67
- Chippewa Bay, oil on board, 92.67
- Untitled (Impressionistic scene), oil on canvas, 91.67
The multi-venue retrospective exhibition, Tucker Smith: A Celebration of Nature, includes a Whitney work by Tucker, The Boys of Summer (oil on canvas, 2.19). The exhibition presents the breadth of subject matter Tucker has tackled, including western wildlife, camp and cowboy scenes, as well as stunning landscapes. The retrospective appeared at the National Museum of Wildlife Art before traveling to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, the National Sporting Library and Museum, the C.M. Russell Museum, and The Booth Western Art Museum.
Three paintings by Joseph Henry Sharp and several of the artist’s studio artifacts were loaned to The Couse-Sharp Historic Site in Taos, New Mexico, for the exhibition Sharp in Montana, which was on viewin 2020.
- Burial Cortege of a Crow Chief, oil on canvas, 2.61
- Sketch for Burial Cortege of a Crow Chief (Indian looking to the right), oil on canvas, 13.61
- Sketch from Burial Cortege of a Crow Chief (Indian looking left), oil on canvas, 12.61
Fifteen paintings of northeastern scenes by Frederic Remington and several of the artist’s personal firearms are currently on long-term loan to the Frederic Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, New York. These works complement the Remington Art Museum’s wide-ranging permanent collection of the artist’s work and possessions, and connect poignantly to the local landscape, which Remington called home for most of his life.
