Ancient. Massive. Wild. – The Bison Exhibit
Oklahoma City, OK
Allan Houser’s father was a cousin of Geronimo, the Chiricahua Apache leader, who, with a band of his people, was led into captivity in 1886 by the federal government. Houser (1914-1994) wrote, “I was 20 years old when I finally decided that I really wanted to paint. I had learned a great deal about my tribal customs from my father and my mother, and the more I learned the more I wanted to put it down on canvas. That’s pretty much how it started.” He attended Dorothy Dunn’s studio at the Santa Fe Indian School but was disenchanted with her restrictive teaching. His painting, Buffalo Hunt, 1952, is in the collection of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It is reminiscent of the two-dimensional figures against a plain background taught by Dunn, but already shows the drama and sinuous lines that would be a characteristic of his later sculptures for which he is most well-known.
The National Cowboy Museum is hosting the exhibition Ancient. Massive. Wild – The Bison Exhibit February 9 through May 12. The Bison Exhibit is organized and circulated by the National Buffalo Foundation with appreciation to the Kaufmann Museum of Newton, Kansas. The museum notes, “This exhibition explores the meaning and significance of this iconic creature from the Plains Indian culture of the 1800s through the commercial and national symbol of the present, and also illuminates the human response that eventually led to the bison’s preservation as a species and a symbol in the 20th century.”
The exhibition’s organizers explain, “Saving the bison from near extinction required a core of concerned individuals that became an international movement of people with conservation ideals, Native Americans and Great Plains ranchers. Today natural preserves and ranches in all 50 of the United States and all of the Canadian provinces support herds of about 500,000 bison.”
The museum is augmenting The Bison Exhibit with works from its own extensive collection, “which offers a rich display of paintings, photographs, and sculpture depicting bison across the many cultures of the American West.” In addition to the Houser, there is Tucker Smith’s, The Return of Summer, 1990. Smith depicts a majestic bull overlooking the herd grazing peacefully in a lush valley.
Smith writes, “Personally, art has broadened my interests and helped me to see the not-so-obvious. One of the greatest attributes of art is that one does not need to be a painter or sculptor to participate. One only needs to observe.”