Blood & Thunder: The Idealized American West and Its Place Today: Art

A remarkable testament to the enduring culture, power, and myth of the American West This handsome book displays an extraordinary breadth of masterworks dating from the 1790s to the present, including over 140 artists in some 320 beautiful color reproductions. In a variety of media and styles, iconic American artists including Frederic Remington, Thomas Moran, Charles M. Russell, and Georgia O'Keeffe, as well as under-explored artists such as Walter Ufer and Kevin Red Star, address the fascinating topics and themes of Native American culture, American politics, land conservation, and the implications of Manifest Destiny. The historical art featured here helped to shape our perceptions of Native Americans, cowboys, and western landscapes; the recent and contemporary pieces shed a modern light on western cultures and challenge long-held myths and assumptions about the American West.   Art of the American West is timed to coincide with the opening of a new expansion to the Tacoma Art Museum, brilliantly designed to house these artworks and to connect with and contribute to the city's culture and history. Lavishly illustrated, the book also includes insightful essays written by some of the most important scholars working with this material today. This privately held collection is published here for the first time. Published in association with the Tacoma Art Museum

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER . A photographic and narrative celebration of contemporary Native American life and cultures, alongside an in-depth examination of issues that Native people face, by celebrated photographer and storyteller Matika Wilbur of the Swinomish and Tulalip Tribes. "This book is too important to miss. It is a vast, sprawling look at who we are as Indigenous people in these United States."-Tommy Orange (Cheyenne and Arapaho), author of There There Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal In 2012, Matika Wilbur sold everything in her Seattle apartment and set out on a Kickstarter-funded pursuit to visit, engage, and photograph people from what were then the 562 federally recognized Native American Tribal Nations. Over the next decade, she traveled six hundred thousand miles across fifty states-from Seminole country (now known as the Everglades) to Inuit territory (now known as the Bering Sea)-to meet, interview, and photograph hundreds of Indigenous people. The body of work Wilbur created serves to counteract the one-dimensional and archaic stereotypes of Native people in mainstream media and offers justice to the richness, diversity, and lived experiences of Indian Country. The culmination of this decade-long art and storytelling endeavor, Project 562 is a peerless, sweeping, and moving love letter to Indigenous Americans, containing hundreds of stunning portraits and compelling personal narratives of contemporary Native people-all photographed in clothing, poses, and locations of their choosing. Their narratives touch on personal and cultural identity as well as issues of media representation, sovereignty, faith, family, the protection of sacred sites, subsistence living, traditional knowledge-keeping, land stewardship, language preservation, advocacy, education, the arts, and more. A vital contribution from an incomparable artist, Project 562 inspires, educates, and truly changes the way we see Native America.

A groundbreaking exhibition catalogue of Native, First Nations, Metis, and Inuit photography from the nineteenth century to the present day   Photographs of and by Native people have long been exhibited in museums. All too often, however, such exhibitions have misrepresented vital cultural and historical contexts, neglecting the depth of practice, supporting scholarship, and Native perspectives relevant to the work. By developing a broadly representative curatorial council of prominent academics and artists, more than half of whom represent Native communities in the United States and Canada, this book significantly expands the traditional discourses of photographic history.   With incisive contributions by individual curatorial council members, In Our Hands presents Native photography in three thematic sections that underscore the following: Native people are present in all facets of American life; their role is transformative in the larger society; and their view of, and connections to, the land and all living things is holistic and fundamental. The publication features 130 photographic works by Native photographers from the late nineteenth century to the present, ranging from documentary photographs to family snapshots to conceptual works. Illustrated in full color, the photographs in this book offer diverse perspectives spanning geographic, chronological, and artistic experience, and shed new light on the extraordinary contributions of Native, First Nations, Metis, and Inuit artists to the art of the Americas.   Distributed for the Minneapolis Institute of Art   Exhibition Schedule   Minneapolis Institute of Art (October 2023-January 2024)

Eight Seconds: Black Rodeo Culture, Photographs by Ivan McClellan, offers an inside look at Black cowboy culture across the United States in the 21st century. In 2015, photographer Ivan McClellan attended the Roy LeBlanc Invitational in Oklahoma, the country's longestrunning Black rodeo, at the invitation of Charles Perry, director and producer of The Black Cowboy. Over the next decade, McClellan embarked on a journey across the nation, crafting a multi-layered look at contemporary Black rodeo culture for the new book, Eight Seconds. Whether photographing teen cowgirl sensation Kortnee Solomon at her family's Texas stables, capturing bull riding champion Ouncie Mitchell in action, or kicking it with the Compton Cowboys at their Los Angeles ranch, McClellan chronicles the extraordinary athletes who keep the magic and majesty of the "Old West" alive with high-octane displays of courage, strength, and skill. The book's title refers to the sport of bull riding - athletes must stay on a bull for eight seconds while it bucks and the more hectic the ride, the higher they score. Eight Seconds: Black Rodeo Culture, Photographs by Ivan McClellan creates a bridge between present and past through sports, community, and love of the land.

Ledger art has traditionally been created by men to recount the lives of male warriors on the Plains. During the past forty years, this form has been adopted by Native female artists, who are turning previously untold stories of women's lifestyles and achievements into ledger-style pictures. While there has been a resurgence of interest in ledger art, little has been written about these women ledger artists.  Women and Ledger Art calls attention to the extraordinary achievements of these strong women who have chosen to express themselves through ledger art. Author Richard Pearce foregrounds these contributions by focusing on four contemporary women ledger artists: Sharron Ahtone Harjo (Kiowa), Colleen Cutschall (Oglala Lakota), Linda Haukaas (Sicangu Lakota), and Dolores Purdy Corcoran (Caddo). Pearce spent six years in continual communication with the women, learning about their work and their lives. Women and Ledger Art examines the artists and explains how they expanded Plains Indian history. With 46 stunning images of works in various mediums--from traditional forms on recovered ledger pages to simulated quillwork and sculpture, Women and Ledger Art reflects the new life these women have brought to an important transcultural form of expression.

Set in a stunning large-format book, the pages within inspire with a fresh and contemporary perspective of the cowboy culture, the families, men, women, children as well as rodeo and ranching communities in the heartland of the great American West and beyond Anouk's newest work, American Cowboys, provides an inspiring homage to our American pioneering spirit and its enduring strength that is alive and well in today's contemporary world Having earned wide acclaim for her bestselling Wild Horses of Cumberland Island (2017) and West: The American Cowboy (2019), this new collection of work that is American Cowboys is Anouk's strongest work yet. Join Anouk Masson Krantz in her solo journey across America where she reveals the intimate lives and families of this private, elusive icon of our American West. Through her lens Anouk showcases an incredible journey from an outsider's perspective into the private world of the American cowboy. Real people and real stories -- a remarkable and inspiring story of people coming together to share their lives and celebrate the nation's cowboy culture. This book is a must-have title among Anouk's fine collections of photographs. Anouk's work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across America. She is renowned for her large-scale contemporary photography and her use of white space that defines her elegant, minimalistic style.