Curating the West
Each Month We Ask Leading Museum Curators About What’s Going On In Their World.
What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why?
I am looking forward to completing our new installation showcasing the Browning Firearms Collection, which will open in June 2020. We’ve had the firearms on a temporary display since 2016, so I am excited to move forward with a fresh design and interpretation that will focus on technology in the American West.
What are you reading?
Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber. The book traces the historical trajectories of credit systems and currency and their ties to slavery and warfare. It also challenges the morality of debt. It’s provided me with some interesting ways to think about patronage and donor relations.
Interesting exhibit, gallery opening or work of art you’ve seen recently.
I was in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, visiting family over the holidays and went to the Happy exhibit at the NSU Art Museum. The show incorporates a variety of media and contemporary artists under the premise that the act of creation is an artistic means of channeling negative emotions into something uplifting and positive. It’s an engaging spectacle of color and pop culture.
What are you researching at the moment?
In preparation for the new firearms display I am researching the history of firearms in the
West, and the evolution of gun design. I am also doing research into the Browning family and the early history of the Browning Brothers Company. This installation will be part of a larger look at technology and important figures in the West. As part of that I am digging into local archives as well on enterprising figures like Mary Fields and the Ursuline nuns and how they helped shape Great Falls.
What is your dream exhibit to curate? Or see someone else curate?
One of the museum’s big, upcoming target dates is 2026, the 100th anniversary of Charles Russell’s death. What I’d love to do is a re-mash of the Dore Galleries’ London exhibits of spring 1914, which saw Russell’s The West That Had Passed
exhibit on display in the same building as the Italian Futurist’s collective show. I think that pairing these two vastly different but co-current visions of what masculinity and social change looks like would be fascinating.