Smithsonian American Art Museum Launches Touring Exhibition "George Catlin's American Buffalo"
American artist George Catlin (1796-1872) journeyed west five times in the 1830s, traversing the Great Plains where he visited and painted more than 140 American Indian tribes. The exhibition "George Catlin's American Buffalo" presents 40 original Catlin paintings from the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection to show the crucial role of the buffalo in Plains Indian culture. The museum holds the nearly complete surviving set of Catlin's first Indian Gallery - more than 500 works - painted from life in the 1830s. The exhibition is organized by the museum in collaboration with the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Adam Duncan Harris, the Petersen Curator of Art and Research at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, is the guest curator.
The exhibition debuts May 10 at the National Museum of Wildlife Art and will remain on display through Aug. 25. It then travels to the Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Springs, Calif. (Oct. 1 - Dec. 29), the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Mont. (May 31, 2014 - Sept. 14, 2014), the Mennello Museum of American Art in Orlando, Fla. (Oct. 4, 2014 - Jan. 1, 2015) and the Reynolda House Museum of American Art in Winston Salem, N.C. (Feb. 12, 2015 - May 3, 2015).
"Catlin's Indian Gallery is an unparalleled collection of great artistic and historical significance that contributes to understanding America's frontier and the cultures of the Plains Indian tribes," said Elizabeth Broun, The Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. "This exhibition features the paintings showing the ways Native American life centered on the buffalo, consistent with the National Museum of Wildlife Art's focus on humanity's relationship with nature."
