Whitney Gallery Reopening Celebrates Past, Envisions Future

See the West in a whole new way. The Whitney Gallery opens the West!

Since it closed for remodeling on October 1, 2008, the Whitney Gallery of Western Art at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center has been anything but quiet. The reinstallation momentum increased every day as the June 21, 2009, opening day approached.

From rolling up artist Harry Jackson’s monumental paintings over huge drums for safe keeping to re-assembling the parts and pieces of a larger than life sculpture of man and horse, it’s been “all Whitney, all the time” for Curator Mindy Besaw, who said, “I hope to provide visitors with a rich new perspective on the role of art in understanding the American West.”

“Seeing the West in a whole new way” is not only the catch phrase for the 50th Anniversary of “the Whitney,” it’s the very essence of its new design. The reinterpreted gallery goes beyond a traditional chronological display of artwork to create a mixture of historic and contemporary art, grouped together based on such themes as, “Horses in the West,” “Wonders of Wildlife,” “Heroes and Legends,” and “Inspirational Landscapes.” Put another way, it “celebrates the past and envisions the future.”

The gallery’s history began—as so often happens in Cody, Wyoming—with William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, when the Buffalo Bill Memorial Association commissioned a New York artist, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, to create a monument to Cody. She donated Buffalo Bill – The Scout, which was dedicated on July 4, 1924, and forty acres of adjacent land.

For 30 years, the Scout remained a solitary horse-and-rider at the outskirts of town. In 1954, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, the sculptor’s son, donated funds in his mother’s honor to create a western art gallery in Cody, Wyoming. Then, in 1957, the Honorable Robert Coe, acting for the Coe Foundation, purchased the Frederic Remington studio collection of paintings, sketches, and artifacts and gave it to the Buffalo Bill Memorial Association for a new art museum.

And, as they say, the rest is history.

Not surprisingly, when the Whitney gallery first opened on April 25, 1959, it, too, was “seeing the West in a whole new way.” After all, it was one of the very first museums to feature art of the American West. Its opening then was a huge success, and the gallery’s reopening in 2009 is certainly be the same.

Review the Whitney gallery reinstallation by checking its blog at bbhc.org/wgwa and clicking on “Whitney Gallery Reinstallation Blog.”

For general information, visit bbhc.org or call 307-587-4771.