The American West is something that lives in the imaginations of many people all around the world. It’s something that I heard about all the time as a kid growing up in Australia before I came to the States. Many childrens programs made by Americans were really imbued with this sense of reverence for the history of this great nation.
The Stark Museum of Art is located in Orange, Texas and is run by the Stark Foundation, an organisation that lives on in the memory of HJ Lutcher Stark and his mother Miriam Stark, two avid collectors of Western Art from the early 1920s.
They collected Western Art, art by American Indians through to things like decorative art and very rare books and manuscripts. The collection has a very Western feel to it, when you look at the website. There’s quite a few paintings shown on the website and all reflect the beauty of the arid landscape that it depicts. There’s also an amusing wooden model depicting a “shot-gun wedding” which will bring a smile to the face.
I love the ideas of museums like these that have specific ideas about the kind of art they will keep and display, as opposed to trying to be all things to all men, which I have seen before and it really does not work.
Much of the American Indian collect are cultural artefacts in a way. The people of this culture instilled form as well as function into their day to day objects of living, as opposed to the way we live today in the modern world.
If you’re passing through Texas - and hopefully I will be too, in a year or so - get down to Orange and have a good look at the collections. The Museum runs different exhibitions throguhout the year. If you can’t check it out, go to the website where it talks about exhibitions on loan as well.
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