Upcoming Exhibitions
John Isaiah Pepion. “When the Buffalo Came Back.” 2018 © John Isaiah Pepion.
Coming in May 2018
Native Nations Now: An Exhibition of Contemporary Native Art
May 17 – October 29, 2018
The Center of the West’s Plains Indian Museum is partnering with the Creative Indigenous Collective on this special exhibition featuring the work of Plains Indian artists Robert Martinez, John Isaiah Pepion, Holly Young, Lauren Monroe, Louis Still Smoking, Gina Still Smoking, and Ben Pease.
Native Nations Now: An Exhibition of Contemporary Native Art introduces the Creative Indigenous Collective as a regional force of national significance—seven Native artists (from Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota) are featured in the temporary exhibition. The exhibition, along with the opening reception on May 17, is the first of many future opportunities to establish the presence of Native art in the Plains Indian Museum with dynamic, emerging, and impactful contemporary Native artists.
Learn more about this exhibition.
Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902). “The Buffalo Trail,” ca. 1867. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of Martha C. Karolik for the M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Paintings, 1815–1865. 47.1268
Coming in June 2018
Albert Bierstadt: Witness to a Changing West
June 8 – September 30, 2018
The Buffalo Bill Center of the West and Gilcrease Museum have partnered to present a groundbreaking exhibition titled Albert Bierstadt: Witness to a Changing West. Bierstadt (1830–1902) is best known as America’s premier western landscape artist, as well as a renowned history painter, a rarely discussed element of his legacy. This major exhibition will address Bierstadt in context of his treatment not just of majestic mountains and lakes but more prominently of bison and American Indians, whom he approached as key subjects for his art.
Learn more about this exhibition.
After its run at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, this exhibition travels to Gilcrease Museum, where it opens November 3, 2018, and runs through February 10, 2019.
Monarch of the Skies: The Golden Eagle in Greater Yellowstone and the American West
Opens June 10, 2018
The golden eagle is the most powerful avian predator in North America but is facing many new challenges—challenges especially acute in the sagebrush-steppe environments of the American West. Once the most widespread native environment in North America, the sagebrush-steppe is now among its most imperiled. By 2080, the golden eagle is projected to lose 41 percent of breeding range and 16 percent of non-breeding range. Whether this apex predator will keep pace with an increasingly fragmented breeding range is uncertain.
Golden eagle alighting on a branch. Moosejaw Bravo Photography image.
Monarch of the Skies: The Golden Eagle in Greater Yellowstone and the American West is an exciting, new exhibition that will immerse visitors in the sagebrush grasslands of Wyoming through recreated sandstone cliffs and other habitats, stunning video and photography, taxidermy mounts, models, and other natural history objects, Native American cultural materials, rock art, and engaging interactive elements. Through interactive storytelling and audiovisual presentations focused on the Draper Museum’s long-term golden eagle studies in the Bighorn Basin and similar studies in other regions of western North America, visitors will be introduced to the process, product, and adventure of scientific inquiry and discovery. The exhibition will provide an especially dynamic platform for ongoing educational programming about sagebrush-steppe landscapes and wildlife, cultural associations with eagles and other wildlife, and the process and importance of scientific problem-solving.
Monarch of the Skies opens to the public June 10, 2018, when it becomes a permanent extension to the Draper Natural History Museum Alpine-to-Plains Trail exhibit experience. It will occupy the Draper’s lower level, adjacent to the Plains/Basin Environment, the Greater Yellowstone tile map, and the Draper Discovery Laboratory.
