The wide-open skies. The breathtaking vistas. The hard-bitten men and women of the Plains. Ever since the West captured our cultural imagination, the people, landscape, and culture of the American Southwest has been a favorite subject for artists. Our extensive Southwestern American art collection explores every angle of this fascination.
Our permanent Southwestern Gallery cycles western illustrations by artists including W. Herbert Dunton, Frank B. Hoffman, and N.C. Wyeth, as well as landscapes by artists including Charles Partridge Adams, Albert L. Groll, William Robinson Leigh, and Carl Oscar Borg.
At the heart of our collection are works from the highly regarded Taos Art Colony and Taos Society of Artists, including Oscar E. Berninghaus, Ernest L. Blumenschein, E. Irving Couse, Victor Higgins, Bert Geer Phillips, J. H. Sharp, and Walter Ufer. Other Taos artists are also represented, including Patrocino Barela, Dorothy Brett, Andrew Dasburg, Nicolai Fechin, and Joseph A. Fleck.
Taos isn’t the only source of fantastic southwest art. Our collection also includes pieces from members of the Santa Fe Art Colony, including works by Gerald Cassidy, Sheldon Parsons, Carlos Vierra, Warren E. Rollins, Albert H. Schmidt, Agnes C. Sims, and Los Cinco Pintores (Jozef Bakos, Fremont Ellis, Walter Mruk, Willard Nash, and Will Shuster). Work from Pedro Cervantes, Frank Paul Sauerwein, Peter Hurd, and other New Mexico artists round out this collection.
And no southwestern art collection is complete without work by representatives of the area’s earliest inhabitants. Our collection of American Indian paintings and prints include early San Ildefonso painters Tonita Pena and Romando Vigil; Taos artists Albert Looking Elk and Albert Lujan; early Kiowa painters Spencer Asah, James Auchiah, Jack Hokeah, Stephen Mopope, Lois Smokey, and Monroe Tsa Toke; later Kiowa artists Lee Tsa Toke and Woody Big Bow; Santa Fe Indian School artists Creek/Potowatomi Woody Crumbo; Navajos Harrison Begay, Andrew Tsinajinnie, and Beatien Yazz; and contemporary artists Allan Houser, Oreland Joe, Harry Fonseca, Carl Gorman, Charles F. Lovato, and Virginia Stroud.