JACKSON, Wyo. — The Jackson Hole History Museum will debut a new exhibit featuring five women artists from Wyoming and Montana who were working at the turn of the 20th century.
“Women Artists of the American West: Trailblazers at the Turn of the 20th Century” will launch on Wednesday, Jan. 29, with an opening reception that is free and open to the public. The exhibit was created in collaboration with AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions; its director and exhibition curator Camille Morineau will give a short talk at the opening reception.
Featuring work by two photographers and three painters, the collection of approximately 20 paintings and 20 photos aims to illuminate an underrepresented view of the American West. AWARE Art Historian Lucia Pesapane told Buckrail that exhibit visitors can expect to see a different point of view than Western art typically depicts, emphasizing the domestic reality of women adapting to their physical surroundings and to an evolving political atmosphere.
“We don’t see portraits of gold miners or cowboys,” Pesapane said. “It’s more intimate.”
History Jackson Hole Executive Director Morgan Jaouen agreed that the exhibit will offer a valuable new angle of the pioneer era.
“It’s showcasing a more holistic view of how the West was being documented, interpreted and shared at the turn of the 20th century,” Jaouen said. “A lot of people are familiar with Thomas Moran and William Henry Jackson, but there were so many artists who weren’t getting the spotlight.”
The exhibit features the work of photographers Evelyn Cameron (1868 – 1928) and Lora Webb Nichols (1883 – 1962), along with painters Fra Dana (1874 – 1948), Josephine Hale (1878 – 1961) and Elizabeth Lochrie (1890 – 1981).
Cameron, pictured right, was known for wearing a split skirt as a means of evading a Montana law that forbade women from wearing pants, according to the museum.
Pesapane noted that photography was a means to gain an independent life for some of these women. Cameron, for example, ran her husband’s ranch but would ride around Montana for miles to offer her photography services to supplement her income.
“They could leave and sell their own art and this was quite rare,” Pesapane said. “It was an opportunity to travel alone, independent from their husbands.”
Also part of the exhibit are journals and letters kept by these artists, lending a peek inside their interior lives.
“We’re hoping people walk away having learned something new, something that sparked their curiosity or inspired them,” said Jackson Hole History’s Exhibits & Communications Director Kirsten Corbett. “These painters, both their work and their stories, I found very inspiring and still applicable to life today.”
Wednesday’s opening reception will be held from 5:30 to 7 p.m., with remarks scheduled for 6 p.m. The exhibit runs through July 12.
