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. […]
American bison
Bierstadt: William Jacob Hays, Champion of the Bison
William Jacob Hays, a friend of Bierstadt’s, was awestruck by the bison herds along the Missouri, and wrote, “On my way down the river I saw thousands of buffalo; they […]
Bierstadt: Forerunners to Bierstadt
Bierstadt’s painting The Last of the Buffalo served as a final, desperate call to save a species from near-certain annihilation. But he was not the first—nor the last—to use an […]
Bierstadt: Decimation of the Herds
Bierstadt used art as a platform to denounce the decimation of America’s most iconic and largest mammal. Some of his paintings present the bison as flourishing and others lament the […]
Treasures from Our West: American bison
Originally featured in Points West magazine in Spring 2012 American bison There is no more fitting icon to represent the Spirit of the American West or the Buffalo Bill Center […]
Treasures from Our West: Partial bison skeleton
Originally featured in Points West magazine in Winter 2009 The American bison (Bison bison), also known as buffalo, once ranged throughout the American West and across the Mississippi River into […]