All Over Albany

Imaging the American West at the State Museum

"Indian Hunter and his Dog" by Paul Manship. / photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Opening this weekend at the State Museum: Imaging the American West: Selections from The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It includes 48 works from the collection of The Met. Blurbage:

In the decades just before and after the turn of the 20th century, paintings and sculptures depicting majestic landscapes, Native Americans, cowboys and cavalry, and animals of the plains and the mountains served as visual metaphors for the Old West. Imaging the American West explores the aesthetic and cultural impulses behind the creation of artworks with American western themes so popular with audiences then and now.

The exhibition covers works dating from about 1850 to 1930 and centers on four specific themes: the land, Native Americans, wildlife, and cowboys. Artists represented in the exhibition include Albert Bierstadt, Paul Manship, Georgia O'Keeffe, Frederic Remington, and Charles M. Russell. The exhibition offers a fresh look at the multifaceted roles played by these artists in creating interpretations of western life and scenery, whether those interpretations are based on fact, fiction, or, most often, something in-between.

It will be on display at the State Museum through July 17.

By the way: The State Museum recently got a new website and it's a big upgrade. An example: check out the "ongoing exhibits" page.