Originally featured in Points West magazine in Summer 2018 Albert Bierstadt’s “A Bull Buffalo” Albert Bierstadt is best known for his landscape paintings, but he was also a skilled painter of animals. Following his first trip west in 1859, Bierstadt began featuring western wildlife prominently in his art. He portrayed pronghorn antelope, elk, mountain goats, […]
Peter H. Hassrick, Director Emeritus and Senior Scholar at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, has won a Western Writers of America (WWA) Spur Award in the Best Western Short Nonfiction category for 2019. The honored article, “Art, Agency, and Conservation: A Fresh look at Albert Bierstadt’s Vision of the West,” was published in […]
If this summer’s visitors to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West are any indication, nineteenth-century artist Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902) has a whole new following. This fall, the Center’s exhibition Albert Bierstadt: Witness to a Changing West moves to Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, leaving in its wake great memories, compelling stories, and of course, […]
In this image, Bierstadt sits in his studio working on a western scene as an audience of peers looks on. Behind him hangs a painted hide, and on his easel sits a stereocard likely made on the Lander Expedition. Bierstadt drew inspiration from photographs and from Native American artifacts he collected on his western trips. […]
Albert Bierstadt: Witness to a Changing West would not have been possible without the generous support of many donors. For this funding in support of the scholarly catalogue and major traveling exhibition organized in conjunction with Gilcrease Museum, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West is profoundly grateful. Our donors are listed below in alphabetical […]
When Bierstadt’s painting The Last of the Buffalo was displayed in Paris in 1889, his urgent message about the looming extinction of American bison was amplified to an international audience. Bierstadt’s painting, on view at the Paris Salon, was at the center of artistic, cultural, and political discourse about the American West on a global […]