Originally published in Points West magazine Spring 2017 Three Women Who Preserved Buffalo Bill’s Legacy By Peter H. Hassrick Curator Emeritus & Senior Scholar In 2017, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West celebrated its Centennial year. Throughout the year, Points West shared many stories of notables—individuals who were instrumental to the Center’s success within […]
Originally featured in Points West magazine in Spring 2018 Photograph, Mary Jester Allen with Frank Butler’s Rifle After the death of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody in 1917, his niece Mary Jester Allen (1875–1960) committed to establishing a museum in her uncle’s name. Determined to keep Cody’s chronicle alive in the town of his founding, […]
Originally featured in Points West magazine in Spring 2017 Photograph: Buffalo Bill’s family at construction site of first Buffalo Bill Museum Seven years after the death of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody in 1917, the Buffalo Bill Memorial Association coordinated an iconic sculpture in his honor, Buffalo Bill—The Scout by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. In 1926, […]
Originally published in Points West magazine Fall 2003 Working with Camera, Canvas, and Brush: The Cody Art Colony By Julie Coleman Former Curatorial Assistant, Whitney Western Art Museum “An artist cannot catch the spirit of the West unless he actually stays, lives in the West; becomes in fact a part of it.”[1] Mary Jester Allen, […]
Mary Jester Allen The history of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West begins with Mary Jester Allen after the passing of her famous uncle in 1917. She dreamed of a great shrine and memorial to honor William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody and the early pioneers of the American West. In 1927, Allen began her […]
Originally published in Points West in Winter 2009 By Christine C. Brindza Controversy is difficult to avoid in most large undertakings, and the creation of a Buffalo Bill memorial was no exception. When Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney accepted the commission to create a monumental tribute to Buffalo Bill, she prepared herself to take on the complicated […]