Stunning Trio
Three new exhibitions set to open at Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West
Arizona’s Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West has been open for more than three years, but already it’s bringing tremendous amounts of interest to Western art with a series of long-term collection loans and traveling exhibitions. Those two aspects of the museum will collide in a big way in early 2019 when three major, and very unique, exhibitions will be on view at the same time.
Two of the exhibitions are already open: New Beginnings: An American Story of Romantics and Modernists in the West, which draws from the Tia Collection, opened in October and continues through September 22, 2019; and Charles M. Russell: The Women in his Life and Art, which travels from the C.M. Russell in Montana, opened November 20 and continues through April 14, 2019.
The third exhibition is Paul Calle’s Life of Exploration: From the Mountains to the Moon and was conceived by prominent Calle collector Tim Peterson, whose vast collection of Western art has been a prominent feature at the museum since it opened in January 2015. In fact, it was a Calle mountain man painting that inspired Peterson’s interest in Western art. The exhibition will not only feature Calle’s Western paintings, including many mountain man scenes, but also his work for NASA, where he was an official artist for many of the landmark missions in the 1960s. Calle was the only artist present during pre-launch activities of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, and many of his works are now iconic images of the historic mission. Paul Calle’s Life of Exploration: From the Mountains to the Moon opens in February and runs through October 2019.
Calle’s son, Chris, is also collaborating with the museum on the exhibition. Chris Calle recently portrayed his late father in Damien Chezelle’s Apollo 11 film First Man, starring Ryan Gosling.
For more information about the museum and its upcoming exhibitions, visit scottsdalemuseumwest.org.